


Bend/Break/Shatter

by Siavahda



Series: Hell's Omega [1]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Runed series - Siavahda
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Body Horror, Breeding, Derogatory Language, Extremely Dubious Consent, Fisting, Frottage, Gaslighting, Hurt No Comfort, I'm Going to Hell, Impregnation, Knotting, M/M, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Pheromones, Possessive Behavior, Runed AU, Scenting, Self-Hatred, Self-Lubrication, Sex Toys, Slut Shaming, There will be no happy ending, Victim Blaming, Which I read as non-consent but your mileage may vary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-05 04:24:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 56,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5361287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where the most powerful demons come from the wombs of unwilling Nephilim omegas, a Shadowhunter omega is a dangerous thing to be. But with the arrival of a strange new alpha at the Institute, it's about to go from dangerous to deadly.</p><p>A dark a/b/o AU of my Runed verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bend

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first time in the a/b/o sandbox, and perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the darkest, most fucked-up thing I've written and posted publicly in, oh, _ever_. I basically used this fic as an excuse to air out all my worst kinks, and I'm not nearly as sorry as I ought to be!
> 
> B/B/S is a little bit of a choose-your-own-adventure story: _Bend_ is the first half of the story, and _Break_ and _Shatter_ are two very different endings to that story. Shatter in particular is unbelievably sick. When it is posted, please DO NOT READ IT without first reading the author notes for that chapter, which will contain all the possible trigger warnings. Neither ending is what I consider 'happy', but Break is definitely a lot better than Shatter.
> 
> Some notes: in this verse there’s a distinct difference (as there is in our world, really) between sex and gender. _Sex_ is your a/b/o designation, which has to do with your pheromones and how you reproduce; _gender_ is your male/female/other presentation/identity. Thus, your gender has nothing to do with your genitalia. Instead of the words masculine/feminine, in this verse we have the terms alphar/betant/omegine, to reflect how closely someone fits the cultural ideals of their sex. Instead of using ‘girl’ or ‘boy’ in a pet-name sense—‘good boy’, etc—an omega would just be called an ‘o’.
> 
> The basic run-down of the sexes’ reproductive abilities are as follows: alphas can only impregnate; betas can impregnate other betas but not omegas, and can be impregnated by other betas or alphas, but they can only have one child at a time; omegas can only be impregnated and only by alphas, and have 2-5 children per pregnancy. Alphas go into rut and omegas go into heat, and one can trigger the other. Alphas have penises, omegas have vulvas and penis-sized clitorises, and betas are like 'traditional' humans and can have a penis or a vulva. In this fic, Jace and Simon both consider themselves male, but since Jace is an omega and Simon is an alpha they have different reproductive organs. This verse thus allows for what most people would consider mpreg, and there are multiple discussions of that, but there will be no pregnancies nor childbirth anywhere in this fic.
> 
> Now, if that hasn't scared you off: enjoy. And I'll see you in Hell.

There’s absolutely no excuse for it.

It’s nothing they haven’t done a hundred times before. They’ve cut the Eidolon out of the club and it’s making a break for it, hoping to somehow outrun three pureblooded Shadowhunters. It won’t, it _can’t_ ; Jace puts on an extra burst of speed and outpaces his brother and sister with a laugh, and his seraph blade is in his hand as he darts into a side-alley after the demon, only a meter or two behind it, he could probably _throw_ his blade and make the kill from this distance—

But the wind changes, and instead of the humid, half-rotting bittersweetness of New York City he gets a face full of, of _something else_ , something rich and incredible that hits him like a fist twisting up inside his cunt. The _reprima_ Mark on his hip blazes up like a brand and then goes out like a light, suddenly, all at once, leaving him bare and naked and defenceless against that _scent_ that sears his lungs and melts his bones. His sword slips from his fingers as the world spins and reorients around him, like there’s a compass in his womb and he’s just locked onto north, his whole body lighting up like a Yuletide tree, flushing with wet, molten heat in a mindless instant—

He falls to his knees with a helpless little moan, clutching his abdomen as if that might grant relief to the desperate ache blossoming beneath his skin, his clit hardening so fast it physically _hurts_ and this is it, this is the end, even through the golden haze fogging his mind Jace’s free hand moves unerringly for his _itsemurha_ dagger, the knife whose name is mercy—because without his _reprima_ Mark there’s no way the Eidolon can’t smell what he is and demons never kill Nephilim omegas, never.

Demons come in castes, and the demon princes are the result of Nephilim omegas taken and dragged to hell, bred to monsters and birthing nightmares that nothing on earth can rival. The Eidolon will snatch him for breeding stock, give him to its liege lord or use him itself to start a new royal lineage, and there’s no Nephilim omega in the world, Jace included, who wouldn’t rather take an _itsemurha_ ’s kiss.

He has the knife at his neck when he realises, dimly, distantly, that the Eidolon is not lunging for the vulnerable omega. It’s not even looking at him.

It is…cowering. From something behind Jace.

From the source of that _scent_.

Jace hesitates to cut his throat and in that instant an arrow whistles past his cheek, brushing his flushed skin like a kiss and shearing into the demon’s skull. A second, and a third, a hail of dark stars and the Eidolon is wailing, bleeding its black blood and falling like the tower of Babel and Jace hardly notices, hardly cares because that scent is coming closer, makes him sway on his knees, dizzy with sheer burning _need_ —

He hears footsteps behind him, so close, and he barely swallows a whimper as a figure steps around him and into view. “What do we have here?” a voice purrs, a low, alphar voice that skitters down Jace’s spine and between his legs, into his dripping sex, he’s never been so wet in his _life_ _(never been wet at_ all _, he hasn’t been without a_ reprima _Mark since he was fourteen years old)._ A Marked hand finds his jaw and he _does_ whimper then, instantly, without thinking, the satiny friction of calluses against his skin too good to bear, and that voice laughs softly as it tilts his head up.

He sees _(the mouthwatering package between hard thighs)_ dark brown hair and darker eyes, a face that’s almost omegine in its prettiness but with a sharp, feral edge to it, like silk laid over razored bones, and he doesn’t need the desire in that gaze or the curve of that smirk to tell him what his body already knows, knowledge writ across his brain in lines of white fire;

_Alpha alpha alpha!_

“Beautiful,” the alpha murmurs, and Jace shudders with the approval, can’t help it at all. The bite of his zipper against his clit hurts, but he can’t make himself care. The alpha smirks, dark and satisfied, and then his gaze drops to the _itsemurha_ still in Jace’s hand. “You can put that down, treasure. You’re safe now, I’ve got you.”

It clatters against the ground before Jace can think.

“Such a good o for me,” the alpha purrs, and Jace _gushes_ slick, mewls his craving. Somewhere in the back of his mind the humiliation sears like acid, like bile, but it doesn’t matter, every breath fills his lungs with that scent that drives out the rest of the world and he needs it, he needs it like heroin, it aches and he’s so _empty_ —

“Jace?” Alec calls from the mouth of the alley, and the alpha takes a smooth step backward, withdraws his hand and Jace almost _cries_ with the loss, no, no, he’ll be good, please, he’ll—

And then Alec and Izzy are there, and the strange alpha’s scent seems to, to _pull itself in_ somehow, become less overwhelming, and as he comes back to reality Jace hates himself so much he’s almost sick with it.

*

The alpha’s name is Simon, and he’s on errantry, and he doesn’t wear a _reprima_ Mark.

“I find it uncomfortable,” he says easily when Izzy asks about it, and as a fellow alpha she nods sympathetically.

Jace silently calls bullshit; the _reprima_ Mark is the best thing to ever come out of the Gray Book. He _loves_ not being able to smell everyone else’s pheromone-stink, loves knowing that no one can scent his sex through the rune on his hip. Without it even the shrinking Shadowhunter population wouldn’t be enough to convince the Clave to risk their omegas on the frontlines of the war with hell. It almost didn’t; other than himself, Jace only knows of two other omegas who have been allowed to hunt demons, the Clave using them all as guinea pigs to see whether omegas have any value on the field at all. There’s plenty of Nephilim who argue that _because_ of the falling population omegas should be kept at home; that now it’s more important than ever for every omega to be doing their duty to Raziel and birthing as many future warriors as possible.

 _If they want pups so bad they can go fuck themselves,_ Jace snarled when Maryse and Robert started making similar noises after he presented as omega. _I’m a Shadowhunter, not a breeder!_

He presented late, much later than most people. His father trained him expecting him to be an alpha; when he came to live with the Lightwoods, they continued on the same assumptions. When his fourteen-year-old body opened up a passage to his hidden womb instead of dropping a pair of balls, it was obvious that everyone had miscalculated—and that Jace would fight tooth and nail before being benched by _anyone_.

 _I’ll kill anyone who tries to mount me,_ he swore to Alec, shaken and teary where no one but his _parabatai_ could see. _I will, I swear by the Angel I will!_

Fifteen-year-old Alec, an alpha like his sister, had hugged him tight. _If anyone tries we’ll just say you’re mine,_ he said fiercely. _I’ll bite you, and then it’ll be no one’s business but ours, and you can do whatever you want._

_Promise?_

Simon makes Jace wonder if Alec remembers his promise, and if Jace can still hold him to it.

Because Simon’s scent gets everywhere. And maybe this is how all alphas are, and Jace just never knew because he’s never met one without the _reprima_ Mark to cover the stink of their pheromones, without its shield on his hip to dull his own nose, but he doesn’t think so. Within hours of bringing Simon home to the Institute, introducing him to Hodge (Maryse and Robert, Alec and Izzy’s beta parents, both being out on patrol still) and finding him a room, the whole building may as well have Simon’s name written on it, the air’s so heavy with his scent—and Jace shouldn’t know that, shouldn’t be able to tell because Alec drew a new _reprima_ for him before they even left the alleyway, but halfway through dinner it burns out without warning and the scent of him rolls over Jace like a tsunami—

_Alpha alpha alpha!_

“Are you all right, Jace?” Maryse asks, home now and puzzled when her adopted child goes pale as paper, sweat breaking out on his brow and “No, actually, I’m not feeling well, please excuse me,” pushing his chair back and fleeing the gaze on the other side of the table, those dark damn-them _knowing_ eyes—

It’s impossible. This isn’t how the Mark works. It’s always lasted for weeks, 27 days sometimes, as few as six or seven when his body wants to go into heat and can’t—but it doesn’t fade in _hours_. Even his _heats_ —ruthlessly suppressed and never endured, not once—don’t put enough pressure on the rune to drain it in an evening. No alpha’s scent could burn through it so quickly.

Alec must have been distracted, must have poured less energy through his stele than usual. That’s all it can be.

Jace reapplies the Mark in his bedroom, and swallows hard as the lush ache between his legs fades to mere discomfort.

He falls into bed as dawn breaks, and his dreams are restless and strange.

*

Being on errantry means going abroad, spending six months to a year in a foreign Institute to learn what your own teachers haven’t taught you. For whatever reason different demons plague different countries, and the Shadowhunters of different territories have their own ways of dealing with them. Errantry is a legacy of the Nephilim’s medieval origins, a modern spin on the fostering traditions of those medieval nobles, and a Shadowhunter on errantry gives no family name so as not to make use of privileges as yet undeserved, or receive scorn unearned by anything but behaviour and skill. It’s meant to level the playing field between purebloods and Ascendeds, but what it means in practical terms is that Simon gives no surname and the Lightwoods don’t ask for one.

Even if it wasn’t against tradition, they wouldn’t ask, Jace thinks. Maryse and Robert are too delighted to be chosen as a stop on someone’s errantry, too hopeful that this heralds a change in their fortunes. Institutes are meant to be sanctuaries for visiting Nephilim but the New York Institute has echoed hollow for as long as Jace has known it, indelibly stained with the pasts of those who run it. Too many people lost family and friends in the Uprising to make the home of two of Valentine’s lieutenants a popular visiting place; their disgust and hatred has been a storm-cloud above the Institute for years. But Simon’s presence is like a beam of sunlight cutting through that cloud, a sign that now, perhaps, there are those willing to forgive and forget. They love him for that.

But they don’t _know_ him. Oh, he makes Izzy laugh, and he debates esoteric philosophy with Alec, and he spars with Robert and takes over the kitchen from Maryse so she can “let someone else cook, Syr Lightwood, you deserve a break.” He’s polite and charming, well-read and helpful, seems more than capable of using any weapon they put into his hands—

But it’s all a lie. It’s not _true_ , this is not the same alpha who grasped Jace’s chin and called him a good little o in that voice that purrs through his nightmares, who looked at him like he could knock Jace up with his eyes. Jace saw that alpha and can’t unsee him, even if he vanished when Alec and Izzy caught up to them in the alley. Even if he hasn’t reappeared since.

Jace is painfully sure that he will.

*

It happens at dinner.

Four days into Simon’s visit and Jace has almost resigned himself to the way Simon’s scent burns through his Marks like acid, bleaching them white and useless after four or five hours. It’s impossible but it’s also true and there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do about it; he’s _certainly_ not about to tell anyone that his body’s slut-hungry for their new alpha. It’s not their business, anyway.

He draws a fresh _reprima_ under his shirt and goes down to dinner and the moment he puts the first bite in his mouth the Mark breaks like a bone with a burn that jolts down his spine and spills between his thighs, his cunt clenching tight and _gushing_ slick before he knows what’s hit him, before he can do more than freeze in place and struggle not to moan. His sex throbs hard and the pulses of it ripple through his entire body, making his womb ache, his nipples tighten, his clit swell against the inseam of his jeans, hard and fast. He’s still holding the fork to his lips and has to resist the urge to reach under the tablecloth to frantically rub his clit. It feels like being on his knees in the alleyway again.

It takes him a long, breathless moment to understand what he’s tasting, to realise how he’s been tricked, caught, trapped like prey. The bite of salmon on his tongue tastes like _Simon_ , his mouth is full of the alpha’s scent-taste and he’s trying not to tremble with violated horror, with painful arousal; it’s _in him_ , Simon’s scent, not on the walls or even on his skin but inside him, and every omega instinct he has is in paroxysms of ecstasy, pleasure-lust singing through his veins like a choir of angels. He’s so wet he thinks he might be soaking into the chair, his body screaming _breed me_ loud enough to be heard in China, and he can hardly think through the drugging fog in his head. He wants to climb over the table and into Simon’s lap, grind into his crotch and beg for his knot to plug him up and fill this _ache_ —and he wants to be sick, he wants to spit his mouthful back onto his plate and fling his fork through Simon’s eye—and he wants to cry because he can’t do either, can’t go get his alpha’s knot and can’t get the taste of him out of his mouth—

 _(He wants to push his fingers between his legs and fuck himself right there at the table, he_ needs _it—)_

“Don’t you like it, Jace?” Simon asks, perfectly solicitous, he even sounds a little concerned—but his eyes are smirking, knowing, Jace almost whimpers and is instantly disgusted with himself and _no one else notices a thing_ , everyone else is _oblivious_ because they’re all Marked up like they’re supposed to be— “I can make you something else if you’d rather.”

And Robert and Maryse are smiling approvingly, look at the polite young alpha being so attentive to the omega, it’s so _nice_ to see young people these days with proper manners, and Jace wants to laugh and wants to weep and he has no choice, none at all. It shudders through him shameful and hot as he swallows it down, Simon’s gaze dropping to his throat to watch him do it, watch him take this alpha’s scent _(his_ body _, what did he put in Jace’s meal, oil from his fingers or saliva from his mouth or, please Raziel not his come—as if it matters, as if it’s any less intimate than sucking his cock_ whatever _it is)_ into his body, to be digested and made a part of him.

There’s no way not to feel violated. Taken over. _Possessed_ , by this alpha he _does not want_ to be possessed by. The bite of fish sits in his stomach like a brick.

But it also makes him desperate to come.

“Thanks,” Jace manages, and his voice sounds thick to his own ears but no one else seems to hear anything wrong. “This is fine.”

He only realises when Simon’s eyes flare with searing heat that he just thanked an alpha for violating him.

And that he still has to eat the rest of his meal.

By the end of it, there’s no question: he has _definitely_ soaked through to the chair. Humiliation and need are licking him like fire and he’s a breath away from coming in his jeans; he can smell Simon on his own breath now, and every time he dares look up and catches sight of Simon’s eyes on him is like being lashed with a whip of gold, lust so sharp and bright it _hurts_. It’s a hundred times worse than what happened with the Eidolon, all the more so because he’s coming apart and his entire family is _right there_ , sitting next to him with no idea of what a slut he is for their guest, how desperately he wants to shove a hand down his boxers and come, how close he is to breaking and begging. He doesn’t think a _heat_ could be worse than this.

He wants to bolt, but if he gets up they’ll all see the thick dark patch on his jeans, the seat of his ass soaked with slick; they’ll see the corresponding stain on his chair and the tent of his clit begging for attention. Somehow, his voice barely shakes at all when he offers to help Simon clear the table, because then they’ll be gone before he has to stand and if they’re surprised to see him acting so typically omegine, his parents at least seem pleasantly so.

_(He tells himself his voice shakes from terror, fear of being alone with this alpha, but he knows it’s only half the truth.)_

They go, everyone goes, and when the dining room door swings shut Simon is across to him in an instant, dragging Jace’s chair away from the table and shoving the blond’s knees apart as he drops between them and thrusts his face between Jace’s thighs, hard, holding Jace open for him—

Jace wails and comes, and it’s like being struck by lightning, like dying, coming and coming surrounded by the scent of alpha arousal like it’s the oxygen he breathes, with Simon mouthing at his clit and cunt through the soaked fabric of his jeans. It’s more intense than anything Jace has ever felt and when it’s over his fingers are locked in Simon’s hair, white-knuckled from trying to pull him closer.

The horror hits him like a tidal wave.

He whips his hands away and Simon looks up at him, his lips damp and smirk-sharp. His eyes look _black_ , and Jace’s gaze drops helplessly downwards.

When he sees the thick bulge of alpha knot pressing against Simon’s crotch, he whimpers.

Simon flashes fang, the four gleaming-sharp incisors meant to immobilise an omega mate, pump them full of bonding venom for a claiming bite permanent as a brand. For a heart-stopping second, Jace thinks that’s what he means to do—turn his head and bite into Jace’s thigh, pump him full of poison and make him his forever. The certainty is ice-water in Jace’s veins.

But instead Simon rocks back onto his heels. “Go,” he says, clearly amused. “I’ll clean up here.”

Jace has never run so fast.

*

The Lightwoods think Jace has a crush, because he’s always offering to help Simon clean up after meals. That’s how traditional omegas show interest, by being sweet and helpful and showing themselves as good helpmeets, good housespouses. _Look, I’d keep your home so well! Fill me up with pups so I can be a good breeder for you too._

Jace doesn’t have a crush. Jace wakes up two hours before breakfast and spends most of that time throwing up at the thought of facing Simon again. Then brushes his teeth. Then fucks himself on his fingers before drawing another useless _reprima_ and going downstairs.

 _(He never throws up_ after _the meals, though. Even when he tries to, his body won’t give up the food his alpha made for him, flavoured with himself._

_Jace thinks now that it’s spit Simon’s putting in his meals, but he’s still not sure.)_

Breakfast. Supper. Dinner. They all end with Simon’s head between his legs, lips and teeth separated from Jace’s slutty cunt only by thin fabric. They end with Jace’s fingers in Simon’s hair and Jace coming with his thighs wrapped around Simon’s face, keening with pleasure, crying with self-loathing.

Simon takes to licking the helpless tears from Jace’s cheeks, after. His mouth smells like slutty omega from Jace’s slick, but he never tries to kiss him.

The _reprima_ rune crumbles like spun sugar before Simon’s scent, every time. It’s worse than nothing, because Jace keeps hoping that this time, this time it’ll last and keep him safe.

It never does.

Sometimes it lasts for hours, though. When they’re on patrol with Alec and Izzy, the shield of it is unfaltering, solid and sure. It’s only when they’re at home in the Institute that it snaps like thin chocolate. As if Simon’s pheromones are sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger.

But that’s impossible.

Jace thinks about trying to tell his brother and sister what’s going on, but he can’t find the words. And anyway, their nights are suddenly so busy, more demons than usual flooding into New York for them to deal with.

And Simon hasn’t tried to knot him.

Yet.

*

The oil of Simon’s skin makes invisible, olfactive handprints on the thighs of every pair of trousers Jace has.

Jace can’t get the scent out of the fabric. It takes special soap to remove alpha-scent and he can’t bring himself to ask Maryse to add it to the next week’s groceries, can’t bring himself to explain why he needs it.

It’s as if Simon’s hands are still on him. As if he’s always holding Jace open for him. The thought flushes hot, makes Jace go molten between his legs even as his stomach turns, and he can’t make sense of it, how much his body wants it, how it can betray him like this.

He starts dreaming of nests, of building them with pillows and blankets and soft things for him and his alpha. He dreams that he’s swollen and pregnant with a bite on the back of his neck like a wedding band. He dreams of getting fucked so hard his clit rubs off against the bump of his litter.

He wakes up with his fingers buried inside his cunt, grinding his clit into the mattress, and for a moment the disappointment that it was only a dream pierces him like a sword.

He spends the rest of the night in the bathroom, scrubbing himself over and over as if it could possibly help.

*

The day he realises the scent of Simon’s hands has actually bled through cloth to smear over the skin of his thighs like a brand, he comes four times back to back and cries himself sick, hating himself, hating everything.

His body is an enemy he doesn’t know how to fight.

*

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

Jace whirls around before he can think to check his response, disguise how painfully taken aback he is by Simon’s sudden appearance. He looks for his sister but Izzy is gone, and his heart sinks; ever since they conceived of his non-existent crush the Lightwoods are all too happy to give him and Simon a little privacy whenever the alpha hints it might be welcome. She must have slipped out when she saw Simon come into the library, thinking she was doing Jace a favour.

“What isn’t?” Jace asks harshly. They don’t spend a lot of time talking, alpha and omega. He’s not sure they’ve ever had an actual conversation, in all the weeks Simon’s been with them at the Institute.

He feels sick just looking at the other Shadowhunter. Like he wants to run, but he can’t tell which direction he’d move in if he let himself—away, or towards the alpha his inner omega keeps whispering is _his_.

So he stands still, his hand still on the book he was reaching for, and doesn’t move at all.

“What you’re feeling,” Simon explains, like it’s obvious. He’s leaning against a bookshelf with his hands in his pockets, and there’s nothing special about his clothes except the fact that they get to touch his skin when Jace can’t and he hates himself, he _hates himself_. “The confusion. The self-loathing. I could kill your parents for doing this to you.”

He speaks so calmly it takes Jace a second to process what he actually said, and then he can’t believe it. _“What?”_

Simon’s eyes are dark, and not with desire. “They trained you to be something you couldn’t be, and now you’re paying the price for it. You think you’re supposed to be an alpha, so you hate yourself for being what you actually are. But you shouldn’t. It’s not your fault, and you deserve so much better than what they did to you.”

It’s as if the planet has suddenly reversed direction, started spinning the other way. Jace can’t quite grasp what Simon is saying, can’t believe the fervent words he’s hearing. Simon sounds so passionate, so fierce—almost as if he really means it.

It makes no sense.

“I presented late,” he hears himself say finally, distantly. “It…wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know.”

The alpha’s gaze is sharp. “If you’d been born a mundane,” he says casually, “they would have known from birth. They have machines called x-rays now that can see inside you. They would have seen that you had no fangs to drop, and an omega womb, and you would have been brought up knowing there was nothing wrong with that. You would have loved your body and been excited when you presented, not horrified, and you’d know there’s nothing wrong with wanting a strong mate to look after you and make you feel good.”

Jace stares. Part of him is caught on the word _mate_ like a hangnail _(is that what he wants, to mate Jace, take him and keep him and breed him, how can that sound so good and so horrifying at the same time)_ but the rest of him simply can’t believe Simon’s audacity. “Is that what you think you’re doing?” he demands, and his voice trembles because _alpha_ , because he is scared and doesn’t want to be. _“Making me feel good_ , every time you force me? I don’t want you! I’ve never wanted you! I can’t believe you— All I want is for you to _leave me alone!”_

He’s not sure what he was expecting. For Simon to get angry, maybe, or leave, or maybe even be ashamed. But he just looks sympathetic.

“See?” he says, as if Jace is proving his point. “You’re so at war with yourself, you can’t even admit what you really want. They’ve brutalised you, o.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jace snaps.

“Why not? It’s what you are. O. _Omega.”_ In his mouth the word becomes a caress, and Jace shivers despite himself. “You act like that’s something to be ashamed of. It’s not. It’s beautiful. _You’re_ beautiful.”

Before Jace can figure out how to reply to that _(over the pounding of his ears, the racing of his heart)_ Simon _moves_ , faster even than Jace; before Jace can blink Simon has crossed the space between them, is pushing him back against a bookcase and pinning him there, the solid weight of the books against Jace’s back and the unyielding heat of Simon’s body trapping him between them and Jace _arches_ before he can stop himself, gasping as the book he was holding slips from his fingers; Simon’s scent just _washes_ over him and they’re pressed together from chest to thighs and he smells so good, _so good_ , Jace’s entire body simultaneously clenches tight and softens for him, relaxing into him like soft gold.

Simon’s groin is pressed right up against his and Jace’s cunt is melting with needy pleasure, throbbing like a pulse; without thinking he squirms, trying to spread his legs wider, get the mouth-watering bulge in the alpha’s jeans locked against his _ache_ —

“Beautiful,” Simon murmurs, hot and low and Jace shudders, whimpers. Simon’s hands cup his face and his thumbs stroke over Jace’s cheekbones and Jace is dizzy with it, with the thick musk of _alpha alpha alpha_ ; his hips twitch, and again, and then his mouth is falling open because it feels so. fucking. good and he’s just grinding against it, against the arousal swelling inside Simon’s jeans, mindless and starving for it and his whole body burning and Simon’s crooning, that primal alpha half-growl that Jace’s body knows means approval and it makes him shudder, makes another pulse of slick wetness gush out of him—

And Simon’s still talking, calling him _beautiful_ and _good o_ as his _(strong, possessive)_ hands slide down Jace’s body, palm his ass for a painfully brief second before cupping the back of his thighs and—

And _lifting_ —

And fuck, fuck, _yes,_ his alpha lifts him up and Jace clamps his legs around Simon’s waist, the ache of his cunt now positioned right over the hard throb of Simon’s cock and he rocks over it like he can get it inside himself if he just tries hard enough, like their clothes will just disappear if he convinces his alpha he wants it enough, it’s so good and he needs it and he can smell his own slick mingled through Simon’s desire and it drives him _crazy_ ; when Simon drops his mouth against Jace’s throat Jace almost cries out, tips his head back to bare his neck for the lightning-bolt graze of alpha fangs without thinking, craving, _please_. “Good o, that’s it, take what you want,” Simon purrs, fingers sliding down, rubbing over the soaked crotch of Jace’s jeans. “This is what you’re made for, all sweet and wet for me— If you were mine I’d never let you out of our nest, never let you off my knot, fuck you ’till you catch for me—”

He says _catch_ , not _caught_ , not a fantasy but a promise and Jace’s nails rake his back as he goes up in flames, sobbing with the frustrated need, the edge that hones his orgasm so sharp it hurts, bitter and painful and _empty_ ; by the Angel, why is his alpha being so cruel and denying Jace his knot, isn’t Jace good enough, isn’t he…

It’s like falling off a cliff, each and every time, a sickening drop back into reality that leaves his stomach behind. His underwear is damp and the air stinks of omega need and alpha lust, and Jace gags on it.

“Get away from me,” he whispers.

Simon’s lips move over his throat. “Why?” He already has Jace pinned to the shelf with his weight, but now for the first time he grinds his hips and there, _right there_ , Jace goes boneless and mindless at the pressure of alpha knot pressing against his cunt. A helpless, miserable moan drips like blood from Jace’s lips, and Simon laughs softly. “You want me. It feels good. I’d take _such_ good care of you, Jace, and I have the perfect home just waiting for you—you could rule it like a kingdom, have all the pups you could want…”

It hits Jace like one of Alec’s arrows, like ice and like fire: the thought of it ripples through his insides and makes him shudder, and he wants it to be all horror but it isn’t, it _isn’t_ , and salt stings his eyes with shame as _he_ lets loose a wave of pheromones, sweet and hungry with the thought of being bred and nested by the strongest alpha he’s ever met. Simon groans, nuzzling into his neck to get closer to the scent rising off Jace’s skin, and his cock twitches against Jace.

His muscles are like warm butter, but with superhuman effort Jace manages to shove at Simon’s shoulders, hard enough to drive him stumbling back. His eyes are dilated and wild, and he snarls with frustration, flashing fang and Jace has to fight the urge to drop to his knees, soaking wet and panting but _no_. “I don’t want _any_ pups,” he says through gritted teeth, trying not to breathe, trying to resist the scent of angry, possessive, lustful alpha, the way it pushes between his legs and _teases_. “Especially not yours. _Leave me alone_ , Simon. I’m not yours!”

He doesn’t even see Simon move. Jace’s back hits the shelf without warning and Simon’s hand is around his throat, squeezing hard enough to make Jace’s knees go weak with stupid omega need, slutty and eager for this sign of his alpha’s strength, and Jace’s hands fly up to Simon’s fingers on a gasp.

“You’ve always been mine,” Simon hisses, his lips a breath from Jace’s, crowding him in, pinning him in place. “You’ve been mine from the day you were born. You were born _for me,_ Jace, my perfect mate. It won’t be much longer before you realise that.”

He lets Jace go, then, suddenly, sharply, and Jace sags against the bookshelf as Simon whirls and disappears.

*

The words echo and echo in his dreams.

*

He thinks nothing’s changed when his breakfast the next evening tastes of Simon with every bite; sweet waffles made from scratch, strawberries red as gems and perfect cream, and laced through it like the perfect poison the taste of _alpha_ , searing down his throat and making his cunt clench around nothing, around hungry emptiness. The _reprima_ he drew in hope when he got up goes out like a drowned ember.

He almost chokes around his swallow.

It feels like terror, waiting for the meal to be over, waiting for Simon to claim him again. Jace despises himself for it, for this _weakness_ ; he used to laugh that fear didn’t apply to him and now look at him, his stomach cold with dread even as his sex is furnace-hot, ocean-wet. He doesn’t _want_ this, he _doesn’t_ , no amount of physical pleasure can stop him from feeling sick and shaken by the thought of coming undone under Simon’s greedy mouth, under his hands, against his Infernally good knot. Simon made it all too clear last night what he wanted from Jace; a mate-bond, a home together and pups to fill it and it’s almost enough to make Jace heave up his breakfast, imagining himself reduced to some mindless houseslut addicted to alpha cock. Lobotomized by Simon’s knot, swollen with his children. It’s _sick_. That’s not what he is, what he wants to be, no matter how much his body warms at the idea.

He pushed Simon away last night, he tells himself. He can do it again. He _can_.

But Simon doesn’t give him the opportunity. When the rest of the household leaves them to tidy up, Simon doesn’t come near him—doesn’t even look at him. Jace sits frozen in icy disbelief as Simon swiftly clears the table as if Jace simply isn’t there, as if he can’t smell the rich, ripe scent of needy omega mere feet away. But Simon’s not wearing a _reprima_ , Jace can still smell _him_ , so…

It twists through him, sharp and cruel and vicious, and his hormones are so blitzed he almost starts crying: Simon’s ignoring him. Leaving him alone, like Jace asked for, and it ought to feel good, ought to be a relief, but instead Jace feels sick and dirty, humiliated to be sitting soaked in his own slick while his alpha affects complete disinterest. The sense of failure and shame tangle up in his throat and make it hard to breathe, and it’s irrational, it’s _completely_ irrational, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. He hasn’t done anything wrong but his hindbrain insists he’s being punished, tells him to get on his knees and beg forgiveness, and he’s half out of his seat before he can stop himself.

He manages to leave, instead. To get up and walk away. But it’s a near thing, and that terrifies him more than anything else.

*

He draws a new _reprima_ Mark before they go out on patrol, and it dampens some of his need but not all of it. It does nothing for how wounded and shameful he feels.

He spends more time watching Simon than looking for demons, and knows he’s doing it, and can’t stop. The rune is hot on his hip, fighting against the throbbing pulse between his legs as he finds himself imagining tearing off all of Simon’s dragonleather gear, rubbing up against him until he fucks Jace in some horrible nightclub toilet, filthy and hard and brutal. He knows Simon would be brutal, ruthlessly, gloriously good in bed; he moves like a sword, like an arrow, blindingly fast and always on target, a vision of Shadowhunter power. And the demons know it too; they quail away from him as if he has dark wings on his back, as if he’s something worse than they could ever be. Like the Eidolon in the alleyway, that first night, terrified by his scent alone—

 _Strong mate,_ Jace’s hindbrain purrs. _The **strongest**. He would protect the nest better than anyone._

Jace slaps himself in the head and tries to focus.

But he’s _not_ focussing, clearly, because abruptly he realises he can’t see the others anywhere through the pounding crowd of the club. He’s still looking for them when the bitter rot of sulphur hits his nose and the slick, serpentine hand of a Vetis demon closes over his mouth from behind, jerking him off his feet.

“So it’s true!” the demon marvels delightedly, and its other, eel-headed arm wraps tightly around Jace’s chest, pinning his arms to his sides and crushing him to the demon’s body. “The Clave really _were_ foolish enough to let an omega jewel out of the treasury! Well, they have no one to blame but themselves if someone else snatches you up…”

The eel-head of its first arm licks Jace’s mouth, and he gags, stomach heaving; the demon shudders in obvious pleasure. “Yes, yes, let’s get you home,” it says to itself, and Jace’s disbelief—how did he not sense its approach, how could he possibly have been that distracted—frays into outright panic as the reality of his situation hits him. Belatedly he starts struggling, but his feet aren’t touching the floor and his arms are held tight, he can’t reach any of his weapons, and omegas who fall prey to demons never come back, the Vetis demon is carrying him quickly through the club and if it gets him to a portal, if it takes him to Hell—

_No no no!_

His pheromones rise from his skin like an alarm, sharp and bitter with fear-help me-help me but the mundanes around them don’t seem to scent it, the demon has to be doing something. Shadowhunters never learn that it’s shameful to scream for help and Jace tries, he does, but his mouth is still covered and the Vetis just shakes him like a kitten, “Hush now, none of that.” When he tries again, the eel-head hand thrusts its thick, slimy tongue between his lips, cutting off his cry. It tastes like wormwood and ashes and Jace’s stomach writhes with nausea; he tries to bite but it doesn’t seem to care, just bites his lips open with needle-sharp teeth and fucks gleefully into his mouth. It forces him wide open, lips stretched around the disgusting slab of tongue as it thrusts in and out of him, and it feels like a preview, a prologue, a sly promise of what’s to come—he can’t even turn his head away, pinned in place for it, and he moans helplessly, the sound muffled and choked, he can’t—he can’t—

This can’t be happening—

The low, vicious _snarl_ that comes from behind them drowns out the screaming techno like an earthquake’s rumble, and Jace’s spine goes liquid all at once, relaxing despite everything, going boneless and soft in the demon’s grip.

The Vetis turns, and it’s Simon, of course it’s Simon, no one else’s snarl could make Jace’s cunt purr like this, wet and warm even as a new wave of humiliated shame twists like a choking vine through Jace’s insides. He knows what he must look like, helpless and caught with a demon’s tongue fucking his throat, his mouth forced open so wide his chin is slick with spit: it’s crushing, awful. But Simon is a glory, twin seraph blades in his hands like stars and his eyes full of midnight fire, and the savage rage in his face ought to be terrifying but it just makes Jace’s hindbrain squirm with pleasure to see his alpha so angry at someone else touching him.

Simon doesn’t say anything, but Jace’s _reprima_ snuffs out and then he can’t smell anything else, the tidal wave of Simon’s pheromones overwhelming everything else, _everything_ , the pheromones of all these gathered mundanes, the sweat and drinks and the sick demon-stink—

Jace swoons in the Vetis’ grip, going even more limp and open.

But the demon is suddenly not holding him so tightly; the tongue in his mouth withdraws abruptly, almost painfully. Jace coughs as his throat is suddenly clear. “I’m so sorry, my lord,” the Vetis gasps. It lets Jace go and almost shoves him away; Jace’s legs are so weak he crumples to his hands and knees, only just managing not to fall flat on his face. He retches, desperate to get the foul taste out of his mouth. “I had no idea—I did not know—forgive me!”

“You should have known,” Simon snarls, dark and vicious and Jace _shudders_ , the sound of it twisting into his cunt. He’s staring at the toes of Simon’s boots but Simon steps away, around him, and Jace can hear the Vetis pleading, apologising still—and then a high, breaking wail, abruptly cut off, and the heavy thud of a corpse falling to the ground.

The mundanes dance on, oblivious.

It feels like Jace spends hours staring at the floor, but it can’t be more than a few seconds before Simon’s boots stride into view again. The black leather hides the stain of ichor, but the flashing lights make it gleam, and Jace stares at it until Simon hauls him up.

“Are you all right?” the alpha demands, his dark eyes scouring Jace’s face. Jace feels dizzy, sick, caught between revulsion and desire, horror at what almost happened and desperate relief that it was averted. His mind is spinning.

 _“Jace?”_ Simon asks sharply.

“My mouth hurts,” he says dumbly. His lips are stretched and sore and he thinks they might be bleeding from the eel’s sharp teeth. He can’t quite tell.

Some of the savagery melts out of Simon’s expression. “That I can help with,” he murmurs, and somehow Jace can hear him perfectly even over the stupid mundane music. “Come here.”

He tugs Jace closer, and Jace stumbles against his chest, unthinking, dazed. He’s shaking and can’t make himself stop. “If you hadn’t found me,” he manages, and Simon shakes his head.

“Ssh, treasure, it’s all right. Don’t think about it, you’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

His hand cups Jace’s jaw, tilting his face up to Simon’s, and Jace can’t remember to resist, can’t remember why he should as Simon’s lips come down on his.

And. It’s. He thought Simon would be a rough kisser, possessive and owning, but his palm slides up from Jace’s jaw to cradle his skull and his lips are soft and gentle, silky-good. His other hand slides down Jace’s spine, stroking, soothing, and Jace’s aftershock-shudders turn into star-splinter shivers, electric and warm, driving away the cold horror of his near-kidnapping. His fingers tentatively find Simon’s jacket and curl there and Simon croons approval, his palm at the small of Jace’s back pulling him closer, slotting their hips together. Jace gasps at the hot shock of it and Simon’s tongue slides between his lips like a silk ribbon, slow and sure and plundering. He teases Jace’s tongue until Jace moans, knees going weak again, and Simon’s scent is all around him, wrapped around him like protective wings, his saviour, his alpha, his _mate_ —

Wait—

 _Wait_ —

He tries to pull back but Simon’s arm tightens around him, grinding his thigh into Jace’s clit and Jace moans again, his resistance crumbling, forgetting everything but how good it feels, how wet he is, how much he wants to climb his alpha like a tree and beg to be bred—

“Ja—oh!”

Simon pulls away and Jace whines before he can stop himself, before he remembers to be humiliated. Simon growls at someone over Jace’s shoulder and Jace shudders, hides his face against Simon’s neck and _pants_ , oh _fuck_ that shouldn’t feel so good but oh, it really, really does—

But it’s Alec’s voice, and when Jace manages to slip out of Simon’s arms his brother and sister are both standing a few feet away, Alec blushing scarlet and Izzy supremely amused.

“We found the faerie selling the goblin fruit,” Izzy says, coiling her whip around her wrist like a gleaming bracelet. “So how about we head home, and you two can continue this somewhere more…private?”

She waggles her eyebrows, and Jace swallows down a new flush of panic to smile weakly in response. At least there’s nothing Simon can do but accede with flawless, if false, grace.

When they get home, Jace runs to his room and locks the door, and doesn’t come out for the rest of the night.

*

When someone hammers on the door around 4am, he lies still and silent and cold, and prays for Raziel to make them go away.

Eventually, they do.

*

Outside of Idris, Shadowhunters are almost as nocturnal as vampires; demons can’t walk in sunlight, after all, so it only makes sense for Shadowhunters to fit their schedules to their prey. They wake at sunset and eat dinner just before dawn in a system that’s worked for hundreds of years.

Which means that everyone else in the Institute is fast asleep when Jace sneaks out of the Institute the next morning.

The Nephilim don’t have sex shops, but Jace has spent almost a decade in New York; he’s seen the all-night places with their glaring neon, seen the shuttered storefronts of their more upscale cousins. He’s overheard conversations between mundane omegas on the subway, cheerfully discussing sex tips and debating toy brands; glimpsed the covers of omega magazines left carelessly on park benches. He has a general idea of what to expect.

It still takes him aback, when he actually gets inside. The selection is dizzying, tools and toys for the most intimate act imaginable lined up in neat rows as casually as hammers in a hardware store. There are things he can’t understand the purpose of and more he can’t even begin to identify, but he understands enough for embarrassment to twist viciously through his guts, flush hotly in his cheeks.

He almost turns and leaves again at once—but then he remembers the pounding at his door last night, and stays.

If he could just find some way of sating his body’s need…if he could satisfy his desires himself…maybe he’d be able to better resist Simon. If he could take care of himself, maybe he could stop dreaming about Simon’s knot. It’s still humiliating, to even consider accepting that everything they say about omegas is true; that they really _do_ **_need_** to get fucked, that they can’t function without it. But better to fuck himself than spread his legs for an alpha who’ll unmake him, force him to give up hunting and settle down breeding babies instead. If those are his choices, then Jace will pick the embarrassment of sex toys any day.

“Want some help?” the beta behind the counter asks cheerfully, and Jace almost swallows his tongue, but Shadowhunters learn early to ask for help and listen to professionals, so he nods.

She’s sweet and genuinely helpful, and her casual attitude to the range of dildos eases some of Jace’s nerves. When he admits he’s never used a toy before she gently steers him away from the larger examples _(even if his cunt clenches wetly at the thought of them, remembering the hot, heavy bulge of Simon’s knot through his jeans, pressing against him)_ and talks him through the selection. Together they pick out a black alpha-cock of velvety silicone and she rings it up for him.

“Do you want any lube with that?” she asks as she gets him a bag.

He thinks about how many briefs he’s soaked through in the last week, and mumbles a negative.

The weight of the bag in his hand is miniscule, and simultaneously so heavy, a weight like guilt and shame. The bag is discreet but Jace feels like he’s wearing a sandwich board detailing where he’s been, what he bought and why, feels the humiliation like it’s painted on his face. He can’t stop thinking about it, a chittery, glittering sensation like champagne and fear boiling in him as he imagines the firm softness of the toy sliding into him, filling up the empty, hungry space between his legs—and when his _reprima_ Mark judders and gives out, and mundanes start to glance his way, drawn by the scent of his arousal despite themselves, he knows he’s not going to make it home.

The alternative is so obvious it shocks him.

 _Slut,_ he thinks as he turns off the street and into a side-alley, _slutty omega whore_ , and humiliation burns sick under his skin as he ducks between shadows, finds a spot that’s sheltered from the street by the bulk of a dumpster. His hands are shaking as he presses his forehead against the brick wall and reaches for his zipper, and he hates himself, he can’t believe what he’s doing even as he can’t stop himself from doing it, his cunt throbbing like a heartbeat as he pushes his jeans down over his hips, around his knees, his ankles. His underwear is already soaking, his clit hard and swollen; it slaps against his belly as he squirms out of his clinging briefs, and the smell of him is stinking up the alley, drowning out the trash and the smells of the Mexican fast-food restaurant nearby.

_(It feels horribly appropriate, playing the slut in an alley, isn’t that how this all started—)_

He has to try four times before his shaking hands manage to get the toy out of its box, and then it’s all fairly intuitive; he spreads his legs as wide as he can and nudges the head of the toy against his cunt thinking _anyone could walk down here and see you, too much of a slut to wait for a bed, what kind of breeder whore fucks himself in an alleyway_ —

And pushes, carefully, panting, _moaning_ as his body opens for it, so slick and easy, it doesn’t hurt at all _(because you’re made for it, made to take alpha cock and like it)_ , he keeps pushing and it keeps going, one long sweet slide into his greedy hole and it’s so good, it’s _so good_ , he had no idea it would feel like this, waves and waves of mind-melting pleasure emanating from the solid fullness, rippling outwards from his inner walls as the toy nudges them aside, filling up the vicious ache that’s been torturing him for _weeks_. It’s soothing and sweetness and _perfect_ , the most perfect thing he’s ever felt, he thinks he might die it feels so good, like he’s finally whole, finally complete.

The small bump of the toy’s knot nudges his lips and he spasms with a whimper, his clit jerks against his stomach because the stretch is electric, sparkling in his cunt like fireworks, by the Angel if this is what a small toy feels like what would a real knot be like, what would _Simon’s_ knot do to him? The thought of it makes him moan helplessly, hating himself, disgusted with himself for even considering it but it’s there in his head now, the wondering, the _want_ in the pit of his stomach like a hot coal, blazing between his legs. Simon would probably tease him with it, torture him, punish him for stringing Simon along all these weeks by not giving it to him; no way would he be gentle with a slut like Jace, he doesn’t deserve it, look at him panting and moaning for a fake cock pummelling his cunt, but he doesn’t deserve Simon’s knot either—Simon would pound it against his cunt until Jace begged for it but he wouldn’t let it slip in, wouldn’t give it to him, another alpha wouldn’t be able to help it but Simon’s control is inhuman, he could probably fuck Jace for _hours_ without breaking, fuck him until he cried for Simon’s knot and Jace can hear himself, so wet every thrust of the toy _squelches_ and he shudders, lust and humiliation braiding together, his own slick dripping down his fingers, over his wrist, his clit is jerking against his belly and he wonders if he could be good enough to earn Simon’s knot, if he could do that—if Simon would give it to him—hold him down and push it in, and in, make Jace’s cunt stretch to take it—he imagines Simon’s scent wrapped around him, caressing him like a thousand velvet hands as Simon’s knot locks into him, takes him, claims him and maybe he’d say it again, hissing in Jace’s ear as he stretches Jace so full, _‘You’ve always been mine, you were born for me—’_

Jace comes harder than he ever has in his life, harder than he ever thought possible, and if he half-cries _“Simon!”_ into the brick wall it doesn’t matter, no one will ever know, this once he can just—can just—just pretend that it’s Simon’s cock his cunt is convulsing around, pretend that he’s not imagining the scent of Simon’s lust and pleasure and approval, pretend that it’s okay to want what he wants—

He comes down from the soaring heights of his bliss slowly, in increments—but he only comes down so far and no further, and he’s standing panting in the aftermath for minutes before he realises that no relief is coming, it won’t get any better, his body is still burning and hungry and completely unsatisfied with a silicone fake, with the puny plastic knot that it _knows_ is a third the size of Simon’s—

It takes everything Jace has not to start crying right there. Why? Why didn’t it work? Why can’t it be _enough_ , why does he have to be a slut of an omega when all he wants is to be a Shadowhunter? Why is that so much to ask for? Why can’t he be _normal_? Why—

“If you were that desperate for a knot, pet,” Simon purrs from behind him, “you only had to ask.”

Jace comes like a whiplash, hard and fast and without warning, going up in flames like a phoenix because he wasn’t imagining it, that was- _is_ Simon’s scent, Simon saw him, saw everything, _heard him_ and he’s _right there_ and Jace’s body sings for him, ecstatic, indifferent to the horrified humiliation of Jace’s position, jeans around his ankles and a toy up his cunt like a back-alley whore and no, _no_ _(yes, **yes** )_.

Simon’s low laughter sounds closer by when Jace comes back to himself, and he’s almost shocked into coming again when Simon’s finger is suddenly on the base of the toy, thrusting it in. Jace jerks and moans helplessly _(so wet, no way Simon didn’t hear that slick sound and he smells so good he’s right there FUCK ME)_ and Simon laughs again, darkly delighted. “Is your little toy not helping?” he purrs.

Jace shakes his head desperately. “No,” he moans, and honestly doesn’t know what he means, _no it’s not helping_ or _no, don’t do this, please_.

He’s naked and open and dripping wet and Simon is _right there_ —

“It’s all right,” Simon murmurs, smug and ever so slightly hoarse, “I’ll take care of you, treasure,” and he barely has to tug at the toy, it slides right out and falls to the ground because Jace is _so wet_ , wet and trembling and no no no _no_ , this can’t be happening, it can’t, but his clit is still hard even as panic crystallises in his throat, Simon puts his hands on his hips and Jace _melts_ , can’t help it, his breath emerges as a whine that’s half-want, half-terror.

“Relax,” Simon purrs, “I’m not going to fuck you,” and Jace chokes on something painfully like a sob, not sure if it’s relief or regret and Simon’s fingers are pushing between his thighs, Jace shaking his head frantically even as his hips push back into it, no, _no_ , not this, he doesn’t, he isn’t, “don’t,” he begs, a choked whisper, “please don’t,” and Simon’s crooning in his ear and his fingers—

His fingers slide right into Jace, sweet and easy as anything, and it feels so good and Raziel, Simon’s in him, Simon’s _in him_ —

How can this be happening—

His lips part around a wrecked, helpless moan as Simon starts to thrust, slow and deliberate at first and Jace is sobbing outright, horrified and wanting and Simon’s fingers get faster, thrust harder, he can hear the wet noises his cunt is making for his alpha’s touch and it makes him want to be sick, his clit a red hot poker against his stomach and he can’t stop himself from swaying onto Simon’s fingers, trying to get them in deeper, needing them like oxygen and hating himself for it.

“So beautiful, so wet for me,” Simon murmurs, sliding a third finger in alongside the other two and Jace’s cunt spasms with pleasure, he arches against the brick and mewls at the stretch of it before he can stop himself. “But our first time will be in a proper bed, treasure, I’d never make you give up your cherry somewhere like this, you deserve so much better,” and Jace is such a slut, fucking back into Simon’s fingers desperately, what’s _wrong_ with him, how can he let Simon do this to him, how can it feel so good like this? “Such a good little o,” his alpha croons, and Jace just moans as a fourth finger works its way into him, it only twinges a little and then the burn dissolves into molten bliss and what must he look like, slick dripping down his legs like a two dollar whore, jeans around his ankles, no wonder Simon thinks he wants it, he does, he wants it _so much_ and he’s crying, crying because he wants it and shouldn’t and doesn’t and he’s so sick that just makes it better somehow, makes it sharper, that his alpha is strong enough to just _take_ him—

And suddenly Simon’s hand clasps tight over Jace’s mouth and Jace _jerks_ , remembering the Vetis demon, but Simon’s whispering in his ear, “good little o, the _best_ , such a good pet for me,” and his thumb, what, Simon’s thumb is pushing in, slipping in all in a rush and his whole hand is inside Jace—

And then—

_And then—_

Simon curls his hand into a fist inside him—

And Jace screams, screams against Simon’s palm as his body goes supernova and it’s like dying, he’s dying, nothing survivable could feel this good as his cunt _convulses_ around Simon’s fist and it’s a knot, it feels like a knot, Simon’s fist pumping shallowly and his pheromones flooding Jace’s lungs and Jace comes and comes and comes, endlessly, slamming himself back and back onto Simon’s hand and locking around his wrist, Raziel Raziel Raziel—he scrabbles at the brick wall and his nails break and he doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, the pleasure goes on and on and _on_ and he’s going to die, this must kill him, no one could survive this…

But he does. He does, and it’s like a fever breaking, his body calm and quiescent again, rippling with golden pleasure but _satisfied_ , by the Angel, for the first time ever. It’s amazing.

And he’s impaled like a puppet on Simon’s fist.

“There,” Simon says softly, as Jace starts to shake, “is that better?”

Jace nods, jerkily, and shudders when Simon licks his throat.

“Good o,” he murmurs, “you were so good, took my fist like a natural, I’m so proud of you,” and the horrible thing is, that _does_ make Jace feel better, sickly, nauseatingly comforted as Simon carefully pulls his hand free of Jace’s sucking cunt.

Simon’s warmth disappears, and Jace closes his eyes, taking a moment to—to pull himself together, somehow. He assumes Simon’s just withdrawn, but he starts when he feels Simon’s hands on his thighs, and—

Simon’s _breath_ —

And before Jace can turn and look Simon’s tongue laps across his pulsing, throbbing cunt like a velvet flame, and Jace’s hips jerk with delicious surprise even as Simon groans. “So sweet,” he says hoarsely, and does it again, licking a long, lingering swipe over Jace’s sex and Jace whimpers, falls against the wall again, stunned and amazed. “Can’t wait to get my knot in you, pet, feel you go crazy like that around my cock…”

 _When?_ Jace thinks, and not with longing. _When are you going to do that?_ Because Jace hasn’t asked for it, hasn’t courted him, he told Simon flat out to leave him alone and he…he…

Put his fist in Jace like a knot. Jace trembles, terrified. _Next time it won’t be his fist_. Next time he would come down from his omega high tied with Simon, locked on his knot for almost an hour, with no way to run away as Simon pumped him full of come. Filled him to bursting. Next time Simon would do everything he could to knock Jace up, and Jace had no idea where to get an, an abortion—if he’d even have that choice, if Simon didn’t bond-bite him while they were tied, take Jace for his own as surely as a wedding…

He felt Simon’s hands pulling his trousers and sodden underwear up his legs, reaching around to do up the zipper, the buttons. He shudders, repulsed and faintly aroused by the contact, by the way Simon touches him so casually, as though he has the right to.

“Let’s get you home,” Simon says, solicitous, when it’s done, and tugs Jace gently away from the brick wall.

Jace swallows—and catches sight of his toy, abandoned on the dirty ground. “My…”

Simon follows his glance, and sneers, ever so slightly. “If you need an alpha, treasure, you can come find me. You don’t need things like that.”

And he leads Jace home, holds Jace’s hand in the one that was just inside him, and all Jace can think is _this can’t happen again._

_I can’t let it happen again._

*

He has to get out. He has to get out _now._

*

That night when the others are getting ready to go on patrol, Jace tells them that he’s sick. It’s not hard to fake—he’s spent the whole day sweating, shaking, throwing up from nerves and shock and what feels like trauma, horror, fear.

Simon backs him. “He hasn’t looked too well for a while,” he says, and tips Jace a wink when no one else is looking. Maybe he thinks Jace just needs a rest after what they did in the alley.

Gorge comes up hot and thick in Jace’s throat. Somehow, he keeps it down.

But Maryse agrees that Jace is clearly not well, and gives him permission to stay home. Alec and Izzy wish him well, tell him they’ll see him later. They go.

They all go.

 _Jace_ goes, once the Institute is empty (except for Hodge, somewhere, and Church, somewhere else. But they can be avoided.) He has a rucksack and mundane clothes and he leaves, quickly, quietly.

It’s not running away. Not really. He’s not abandoning the Nephilim. He’s just going to get on a train to Washington and go to the Institute there, and explain—explain as much as he can. _(Which is what? What will he say? What will he tell them, that he’s too much of an omega slut to be around an alpha who won’t wear a_ reprima _?)_ He’ll send a letter home. He’ll go on errantry. And Simon will be gone, moved on, by the time Jace comes home again.

It’s not that complicated, and it’s not forever. It’s not even that drastic. Running away to be a mundane, now that would be drastic. Jace is just—taking a holiday.

That’s all.

*

The demons take him from a subway platform.

There’s eight of them, and he’s not unarmed but he’s not in gear and he wore a glamour to make moving among mundanes easier; no one hears him when he screams.

He kills two before they disarm him, but it’s not enough, it’s not nearly enough, and he can’t fight them all. They drag him to the ground, they drag him off the platform, and he’s kicking and screaming and even through the glamour the mundanes are getting anxious and restless, able to scent the alarm-pheromones streaming from his skin, the bitter panic-musk that can drive unattached alphas into berserker frenzies and that’s what he wants, he wants his alpha, he wants Simon, he’s sorry he didn’t mean it he’ll be Simon’s if Simon will just come and kill them all, Jace will be good, he will, he’ll give his alpha whole litters of pups just don’t let them take him, don’t, _please_ —

One of the demons says a word, and a portal of fire and flame opens up beneath the railway tracks, vomiting up the stench of sulphur and ashes and Jace can’t make sense of it, can’t believe it, this _cannot_ be happening to him, they can’t take him, he’s a Shadowhunter, he’s a _Shadowhunter_. But reality is right there ready to swallow him whole and it breaks him, the weight and the heat of it and the knowledge that no one ever comes back, no Nephilim omega dragged to Hell ever comes back but their spawn do, the monsters got on them do and no, he’d rather die, _he’d rather die_.

He screams Simon’s name, but there’s no one to hear as they take him through the portal.

As they take him into Hell.


	2. Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think most of the trigger warnings applicable to this chapter are already listed in the tags for the fic, but just in case: this chapter contains **references to forced impregnation/breeding, slavery, rape (specifically public/in front of a crowd rape), forced orgasms, a _lot_ of 'dirty talk' fixated on mpreg, knotting, discussions/thoughts of suicide, no informed consent of any kind, heat-sex (kinda/sorta), and maybe-probably impregnation. Oh, and whatever you consider demon/human sex (is there a name for that?)**
> 
> This chapter acts as one of two potential endings for the story begun in chapter one. The vast majority of you should probably not read part three, Shatter, when it's published. If you want to give it a go, PLEASE remember to read the chapter notes first! I'll post the chapter-specific trigger warnings there.

The other side of the portal is not fire and brimstone but arid dimness, a dry and broken earth that emanates an aura that is toxic to everything Jace is. He can feel it in his blood like a kind of magnetism, how this world hates and hungers for him and it makes him heave, sickened beyond words, beyond mere mortal understanding. It’s like a living thing and the portal is a mouth, swallowing him and he can’t get out and he’s going to be sick, he’s going to—

The demons set him down hurriedly on the dusty ground, and it doesn’t even occur to him to run, his body is tearing itself apart in an effort to empty itself of the touch of this place, throwing up everything he’s ever consumed, heaving and choking until he tastes blood, but he can’t get it out, it’s in him now—or he’s in it—caught in its teeth like a scrap of flesh, toyed with by its tongue—

He doesn’t see the portal close behind them, but he feels it, the teeth of this world closing around him, locking him in.

He can’t take it, his mind can’t take it, the reality of it the realness of it what it _means_. On his hands and knees his arms give out beneath him, and he falls into the dust, coughing, half-sobbing, until the darkness reaches up and takes him and he falls into unconsciousness with pathetically grateful gratitude.

*

He wakes up in a cage.

Instead of scrambling upright, Jace lies still and quiet, hoping no one will realise he’s awake as he tries to take in his surroundings.

None of it feels real. The dark grey sky touched with acidic yellow that he can see through the bars, the miles and miles of burnt-brown plateau in every other direction, all sand and fractured earth and cruel, sharp stones—it’s a scene out of a nightmare, not something that could actually exist. No more than the clot of humanoid demons gathered around the cage, some of whom ride monstrous creatures bristling with spikes; or the team of four Raveners who are pulling Jace’s cage like horses harnessed to a cart.

Pulling it to where?

But even as he thinks it, Jace knows the answer; it closes around his throat like a fist, twists into his cunt like a knife. His empty stomach heaves again. He’s still dressed, and when he tilts his head to look he sees the _voyance_ rune still on the back of his left hand. Presumably, then, none of the demons raped him while he was unconscious, and even if they had _(they didn’t, they **didn’t** , why would they bother dressing him again if they had, and there’s no pain or wetness between his legs, they **didn’t** )_ no Infernal conception can survive in his body while he’s still Marked. That they haven’t removed his runes yet means these demons don’t want him for themselves.

Which can only mean they’re taking him to a demon prince.

The crush of terror at the realisation is so immobilising Jace can’t even think past it; it squeezes his brain like a vise of rusted iron and a scream catches in his throat like broken glass, emerges as a whimper. His understanding of his own helplessness is mercury in his veins, cold and sick and toxic; this was never supposed to happen. This was never supposed to be _possible_ , Alec and Izzy had sworn in front of the Clave that they would kill him before letting him be dragged through a Hellmouth, and if they failed Jace had his mercy knife, since the day he presented he’s been ready to cut his own throat rather than let Hell get its clawed hands on his womb. He was supposed to be dead by now, he was supposed to be dead but he _isn’t_ , he’s in a cage being taken to the one thing in all the worlds he’d rather die than face, the one thing in all the worlds he has a _responsibility_ to die rather than face—and there’s nothing he can do about it. The worst monster Hell has to offer is going to break him open on its cock and force him to birth more monsters just like it, as many as it can get out of him before his body breaks for good, and all Jace can do is pray to Raziel that his body gives out quickly.

He curls up on the floor of his cage to hide his face from his escort, and cries as quietly as he can.

*

He doesn’t hope for escape. Even if he somehow got away from this little convoy, he has no way to get back to his own dimension; sooner or later some other demons would find him, and either take him to their own liege lord or use him themselves. Any demon, no matter how low-caste, can make itself the sire of a new royal lineage if it gets its hands on a Nephilim omega. It’s horrifying enough to contemplate being used to perpetuate an already existing monster pedigree; thinking about being responsible for a new breed of demon prince fills Jace’s mind with white noise. He simply can’t comprehend it.

But when he stops crying he does pull himself together enough to hope that maybe he can trick these demons into killing him. If he tries to attack them when they open the cage, if he can get a weapon—if he can get some kind of blade he can kill himself, and the world won’t have to suffer for his failure, won’t be subjected to yet another horror because one stupid omega was so scared of his own body he ran right into the hands of Hell.

*

He thinks about his family. Often. There’s not much else to think about; the demons don’t talk to him and the view from his bars is unchanging. He can’t bring himself to think of what’s coming, though it sits constantly in the pit of his stomach, an icy chunk of dread. So he thinks about what’s left behind instead. They must know he’s missing by now. Alec will have felt their _parabatai_ bond fall not dead or broken but still silent, stretched too far between worlds to join them anymore. They’ll know something is desperately wrong.

They might believe he’s dead, with no sign from the _parabatai_ bond to suggest otherwise. Maybe they’ll think he fulfilled his responsibility and took his own life with honour, as he should have done.

The thought makes him feel sick with guilt.

*

He should never have run from Simon. That’s what he keeps coming back to. He shouldn’t have run. A good omega wouldn’t have run. A good omega would be home right now, safe and sound and waiting patiently for Simon to come back from patrol. Waiting in Simon’s bed, probably.

Who is he kidding: a good omega _couldn’t_ have run away, because by now a good omega would have let themselves be pushed into heat by the affections of an alpha as strong as Simon. A good omega would be in Simon’s bed, all right—locked on his knot and thanking him for the privilege.

But Jace isn’t a good omega. He’s a bad o, he’s always been a bad o and this is his punishment, from Raziel or God or whoever decides these things: he rejected the perfect Shadowhunter alpha so instead he’s being given to a demon prince, no consent required. Because he refused to bear Simon’s pups he’ll end his days spawning monsters instead, a breeder bitch chained to a demon’s throne like a dog.

It’s so appropriate, it’s so _deserved_ , he might actually submit to it if not for the harm his ‘children’ will do to humanity. If not for that, he might try to accept his punishment. It seems so fair.

*

There’s no telling how much time passes. Jace never glimpses a sun here, which he supposes makes sense. The demons don’t sleep but Jace keeps passing out, which only snarls the passage of time still further.

It’s amazing how boredom will overcome fear. Apparently even with the threat of a demon prince in its future, a human body can’t be _constantly_ afraid. Instead the fear comes and goes in waves, a black tide washing at the shore of his mind, eating away at it like acid. He’ll forget for entire minutes at a time, before it hits him again, where he’s going, what’s waiting for him at the end of this journey.

But he doesn’t get hungry, and he doesn’t need to relieve himself. No one lets him out of the cage. He never gets his hands on anything even remotely sharp or dangerous.

It gradually dawns on him that there will be no escape into death for him.

*

The Nephilim don’t know much about demon princes, but Jace goes over and over what he knows. They’re the ruling caste, capable of compelling other demons to do their bidding. They can work magic, and for all intents and purposes they’re immortal—kill one, and its body will just reform in the spaces between worlds. They can spawn other demons like hive queens, but the only way to make new demon princes is to rape a Nephilim omega. Princes with royal parents are more powerful than those sired by lower-caste demons on Nephilim victims.

They’re supposed to be beautiful. Terrifyingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. Jace isn’t sure he believes that. How can a demon be beautiful? All demons are hideous. It’s a natural law.

The only Nephilim who knew more about demon princes never returned to tell anyone, so Jace does not know where or how the ruling caste lives. But he’s about to join the number of those who discovered it for themselves.

There is no mountain fortress, no castle. Only a hole in the ground banded with what looks like obsidian teeth, but the crystals hum at a pitch that makes Jace sick with nausea and he knows they must be some Infernal stone, nothing natural, nothing true. The teeth part as Jace and his little band draw closer, and it hits Jace again that this is real, not a nightmare he will wake up from—the Raveners pull his cage onto a wide spiral staircase descending into the pit and Jace’s heart threatens to explode in his chest, beating hard and fast with fear like nothing he’s ever known and he’s never been afraid of the dark but he wants to scream as this false mouth closes over him, as he slides into its dark throat like something to be savoured.

Above, the teeth close. The mouth swallows him whole, and the darkness strikes him blind.

It’s terrifying. Utterly, appallingly terrifying. He can hear the clatter of his wheeled cage, the insectile skittering of the Raveners, the footsteps of the demons who captured him and their hideous mounts, but he can see nothing, absolutely nothing. It strikes him that it might always be like this—he might never see light again, and somehow that makes it worse, impossibly it gets _worse_. To be raped in the dark, blind and even more helpless than he already is; to give birth in the dark, and maybe it would be a mercy to never have to see the creatures the demon prince will sire on him but it would be worse, it would be _worse_ to be lost always in the darkness, to never know anything but the sensation of a demon’s cock pushing into him, to never know anything else ever again—

He almost starts crying with relief when a dim glow takes form somewhere ahead of them; despite everything, he finds himself pathetically grateful. They must have left the staircase behind, because gradually he sees that they are in a tunnel now, packed here and there with a fungus that glows grey, and another that burns red like embers. It is an ugly light but Jace is just glad to be able to see at all.

The smallest of mercies.

He has time to grow scared again by the time the tunnel opens up into a huge cavern.

It is very clearly a throne room of some kind. There is fire here, burning black and green and violet; it rings the room, licks the walls like ever-shifting tapestries. More demons than Jace has ever seen in his life crowd the stone space, of more kinds than he can name, more horrors than a lifetime of nightmares could ever produce; there are spikes and slime, scales and vicious claws, alligator snouts and barbed tails and creatures that look like a thousand worms twisted together into something vaguely humanoid. And they are all watching him.

But Jace hardly has eyes for them, because the demon prince is watching him too.

It is sitting on a throne made of the same sickening black crystal as the teeth guarding this place, and it is beautiful, and its beauty is more horrifying than everything up to this point put together; it hooks under Jace’s breastbone like a tangle of scythes, a cold, sharp, agonising pull that threatens to break his bones. In form the prince is recognisably human, without scales or extra limbs or even a tail, and Jace’s gut roils, thinking of the poor omega dam from whom that template must have been inherited. And there are traces of omegine beauty in it, in the porcelain-fine cheekbones, the delicate-sharp lines of its androgynous face. But it is not human, could not be mistaken for anything human; it is over eight feet tall and its skin gleams like an opal, milky-pale and shot with shimmers of colour like cold, icy rainbows; its hands are tipped with claws like diamonds. Jace thinks at first the stuff growing from its head is hair, but then it moves and he realises it is a mass of tendrils like the petals of a sea anemone, black as squid ink and with a sheen like oil, long enough to reach the demon’s waist: no doubt they are just as toxic as a real anemone’s.

_(He thinks of being wrapped in a writhing cloud of those slick tentacles, held trapped for his own ravishment; he wonders what it will feel like to give birth to such a thing, if the tendrils will writhe and scrabble at his insides, and has to swallow hard so as not to be sick.)_

Draped over the sides of the great chair are a pair of wings like a dragonidae’s, huge sweeps of ebony that frame the prince’s paleness like curtains of dark satin. Jace automatically tries to estimate their size; it’s what he’s trained for, to memorise all the details of an unfamiliar demon so he can look it up later, or add it to the Nephilim’s archives if it’s never been seen before. The wings have multiple joints and more diamond-splinter claws at their tips and apexes, and he guesses they might be forty or fifty feet wide when fully extended. The prince’s white chest has no nipples, but does have a navel, and Jace’s insides go cold, imagining bearing a thing like this inside him, growing a placenta all unwilling to tie it to his blood. He can’t see what might wait for him between its legs because the prince is wearing a kind of skirt, a long wrap of what might be silk or might be a demon’s skin, for all Jace knows. It hides everything from the prince’s waist down, but for the taloned feet.

Its eyes are black. Wholly black, with no whites.

“Are you finished admiring me?” the demon asks, and its voice is velvety and amused and Jace starts, flinches back against the corner of his cage before he can help himself, and a wave of cruel, demonic laughter sweeps through the cavern, hissing and chittering.

“It is shy,” the prince comments, and again that laughter, and Jace feels his cheeks burn; humiliated, terrified tears sting his eyes, and he wants to be brave and defiant and mocking but he can’t be, he _can’t_. He can hardly breathe as the demon prince rises from its throne, wings sweeping behind it like a cloak, and walks closer to Jace’s cage. Its talons click on the stone floor, and Jace can’t breathe and can’t think through the sheer, unbelievable terror of it, of being approached by this thing, _watched_ by it, and he wishes its face was strange enough that he couldn’t recognise its hunger but it isn’t and he can, and it is the worst thing, the worst thing in the _world_ —

 _Be brave be brave, you’re a Shadowhunter don’t shame Raziel by being a coward, face it like an alpha—_ but he’s not an alpha and he is a coward after all, because the prince’s hand slides through the bars and Jace whines with fear, fights to get away from it and sobs because he can’t, because there’s nowhere to go but his corner and it’s not far enough to keep him safe. Those claws snag in his shirt and drag him closer like a cat might a mouse, like his weight is nothing, like his _resistance_ is nothing but an amusing game to indulge in, and the tears spill down his cheeks as he’s forced face to face with his new master.

“What lovely jewels you make for me, treasure,” the prince murmurs, touching one gem-like claw to his cheek, and Jace flinches, shudders, Simon called him treasure too and the reminder just twists the knife. “Shall we take that as a good omen? A sign that your womb will make jewels for me too?”

It smiles as Jace sobs, trying to be quiet but wracked by horror, wrecked by it. He shakes his head desperately but the demon croons, “Oh, I think it will. I think you’ll make a lovely _kunnarnatar_ , little Nephilim.”

It pats his cheek and withdraws to go talk to the demons who captured him, and it takes Jace’s fear-frozen brain minutes to translate the word it used, its meaning cobbled together from Hodge’s lessons. All Shadowhunters are supposed to learn three or four demonic languages and Jace wishes that they didn’t because he’d be happier not knowing, a fresh spill of tears streaks his face when he finally makes sense of it: _bitch-queen_ , it called him, royal breeder, priceless but mindless, a living incubator. Because that’s what he is now, what he will be, one of the prince’s minions is pouring pearls and copper coins into the hands of his captors and they’re selling him like an animal, he fought his whole life to be more than the pups he could birth but he was wrong, in the end it’s the only value he has—

The _roar_ that shatters through the cavern is a sonic blast of almost visible force; the Infernal flames flicker and die to embers as dozens, hundreds of the gathered demons stumble and fall before the force that smacks them down; the ground shakes, rumbles like an earthquake is about to tear it in two. Even the demon prince falls back a step before catching itself; in the dim light of the remaining fires Jace sees it spin around towards the cavern’s entrance, its wings flaring wide like twin sweeps of night.

He can’t see much. The cavern is confused, a chaos of bodies. But he doesn’t need to see.

He knows that scent like he knows his own name.

“Simon?” he whispers. It can’t be—his mind must have shattered, he must be hallucinating, but he still scrabbles to his knees and curls his hands around the bars, squinting into the dark and the hope is like dying, it is the sweetest pain. _“Simon!”_

The fires rise up again, and Jace sees him.

It _is_ Simon, a Simon so consumed by blackest rage he looks hardly human. The air around him seems to shimmer as if with heat, and the light of the Infernal fires makes his seraph blades look black, like the demon prince’s throne, like the crystal teeth guarding its fortress.

The demon prince snarls, stepping towards this intruder—but Simon just snarls back, a sound even deeper and darker that thrusts deep between Jace’s legs as he raises his swords, and the prince—

The prince _hesitates_.

“You have something that belongs to me,” Simon says, and Jace’s cunt _floods_ with warm, soaking heat, blood rushing to flush his softest tissues at the bass fury in his alpha’s voice, the flash of Simon’s fangs as his lips curl back. The demons closest to Simon are backing away from him, slowly, as if desperate not to catch his attention, and Jace’s fear-tight throat relaxes into a purr, proud of how strong his mate is, of how much they fear him. “You will give it back.”

“My hunters caught it,” the prince says, and Jace belatedly realises that they’re talking about _him_ , about Jace. “I paid them well for their prize. The _kunnarnatar_ is mine!”

But Simon is shaking his head, and his mouth is almost amused, sharp and cruel. “The covenant says—” And without warning he drops into Gehennic, one of the most complicated of the demonic languages, using words and terms Hodge never taught his students. Just as quickly, though, he switches back to English. “No matter what price you paid, you cannot possess a _kunnarnatar_ who is already claimed by one of the royal caste.”

“It is untouched,” the prince snarls. “Its womb is empty. No prince’s claim is on it.”

 _“My_ claim is on it!” Simon roars, and around him demons scatter, shrieking, shrilling with abject panic; his scent wraps possessively around Jace and he almost moans, swaying on his knees. “Taste for yourself, or strike at me, but I am losing patience with the insult of your theft!”

The demon prince growls—and then turns, sharply, to Jace’s cage.

Jace is slow from the rich befuddlement of his alpha’s scent, too slow to understand what is intended when the prince rips off the door of his cage and flings it aside. But he does cry out, panicked, when its claws close around his leg and drag him out onto the floor.

“Alpha!” He doesn’t do it consciously but instinct tears the wail from his throat, struggling to get away as the demon prince ruthlessly cuts his jeans to shreds with its claws, rips through his _(wet, again wet)_ briefs to bare his aching clit, and no, no, not like this, he thought, this is a rescue, this can’t happen now, the demon shoves his legs apart and Jace begs again, “alpha, Simon, _please!”_

But Simon does nothing and the demon yanks him closer and bends its head down and Jace screams, unfeigned and awful as the prince’s mouth seals over his cunt, sucking and lapping violently at his slick sex and Jace jerks, crying out again, horrified, no no no no it’s a demon, it’s a _demon_ touching him, licking up inside him, oh Raziel its tongue is a velvety ribbon as long as Jace’s _arm_ , slithering up inside him like a snake and he’s all flushed and hot from Simon’s scent, it feels good and it feels awful and his body heaves, trying to be sick, trying to get it out of him, sobbing and crying and writhing like a slut on its forked tongue, on the floor in front of hundreds of demons, in front of Simon—

The prince’s hair-tentacles fold over and fondle Jace’s clit, slick and sweet and he can’t help it, he can’t, his alpha’s scent and the tongue fucking up into his cervix and now the toying with his clit—he comes with a scream, sick sick sick and writhing for it, gushing for it, his inner walls rippling and pleading for more even as he sobs, hating himself, beyond sickened, if he lives for a hundred years he’ll always know that this is what he is, so much of a slut even a demon can make him come, even a _demon_ —

Its tongue gives his cervix one last, sly flick, and Jace shudders, groans as it withdraws slowly, lingeringly. His cunt makes a slick, wet sound as the prince’s tongue leaves it.

“Ah, _kunnarnatar,”_ the demon murmurs. One of its hair-tendrils brushes the hot slit of Jace’s cunt, and he jerks, whimpering, oversensitive and sickened. “We could have made such beautiful young together.”

Jace can’t speak, can’t say a word, choking on humiliation and self-loathing. He can’t stop crying.

The demon prince looks up to where Simon stands. “I will abjure,” it says. It does not sound pleased. “Your taste is in it. You have the prior claim.”

Simon hisses, and the demon whips its hands from Jace’s thighs, retreats.

There is some Gehennic exchange over his head, but Jace doesn’t care, his instincts drive him up. His knees tremble and his muscles are soft and liquid as syrup but he claws his way to his feet and bolts, mindless, all conscious thought suspended by his body’s emergency protocols, his hindbrain in full control. It hurls him sobbing into Simon’s arms and his alpha catches him instantly, wraps one strong arm around Jace without ever letting go of his swords and pulls him in tight, draws him in to the reassuring potency of Simon’s scent. Jace buries his face in Simon’s neck, gulping it down, the scent, the pheromones, the chemical signals that promise safety and protection in a language his bones speak.

He’s shaking. Simon is not. Simon is strong and unwavering and there is not one speck of fear in his scent, only dark, musky rage and savage possessiveness.

“Send the word out,” Simon says over his shoulder, and his voice is a fimbulwinter, the very air seems to freeze with it, carving every word out of ice. “If any court tries to take my _kunnarnatar_ from me again I will destroy that court, and purge its lineage from the _syntirja.”_ Blood-book, the record of ancestries, Jace knows the term from Hodge’s classes— “Lilith will weep with grief if I am forced to come hunting my own _kunnarnatar_ again. Do not try my patience a second time!”

Jace doesn’t see what happens. He’s not looking, he can’t look, he has his face against Simon’s throat and that’s all the reality he wants right now, all that he can handle. But there is a rushing sound, not like wind but like the roar of flames, and for a moment heat licks over Jace’s skin, terrible, searing heat. It hurts and he gasps, tears himself away from it, from Simon who is the source of that fire—

Only to find himself elsewhere.

*

The _parabatai_ bond snaps back to full strength like a dislocated bone going back into alignment, but that is not what makes Jace stop and stare.

They are not in Hell anymore.

They are in a bedroom, a normal human bedroom with green walls and soft carpets under Jace’s bare feet _(his shoes came off with the tattered remnants of his jeans, no don’t think about it **don’t** )_. There is a four poster bed with heavy curtains bound at each post, and there is a window, and through the window Jace can see green grass and trees and a blue sky and sunshine.

They are not in Hell anymore.

“It’s okay, treasure, you’re safe now,” Simon is saying, and Jace blinks because Simon’s seraph blades still look black but then they are gone, vanished away, and there is only his alpha, _alpha alpha alpha,_ who saved him and smells so good, like safety and strength and mate, and Jace is trembling, he still has the demon prince’s saliva on his thighs, dripping from his cunt; he is still half-naked. But he isn’t sure he cares.

“We’re in Idris, in my home, you’re perfectly safe. I’m going to go send a fire message to the Lightwoods, all right? You can—”

“My home,” Jace whispers.

Simon pauses. “You want to go back to the Institute?”

Jace is trembling harder. He tries to stop, and can’t, but he shakes his head. He feels cold. He remembers the heat of Simon’s body holding him and wants it back. “Your home is my home,” he repeats.

Simon stills as if turned to stone. His gaze catches fire as if the black pools in his eyes are oil, and Jace has just dropped a lit match from his lips.

“Isn’t it?” Jace pleads, chilly fear clawing inside his chest. Has he misunderstood, didn’t Simon say—? His thoughts are smearing together like chalk in the rain and he doesn’t understand all of what just happened, maybe not even most of it, but he understood enough to know that the prince only let him go because Simon claimed him first, that if he’s not Simon’s Hell can take him and the thought of going back there births a scream in Jace’s throat. He has to swallow hard to keep it down. “You said. You called me yours. Your _kunnarnatar.”_ He stumbles over the unfamiliar word a little, but he gets it out, wraps his mouth around it, steps towards his alpha again and Simon’s eyes are tar pits, dark and burning and threatening to swallow Jace entire and keep his bones. But that’s what Jace wants, wants so badly his head spins with it.

“I did,” Simon agrees. His voice is rough, hoarse and low; it shivers down Jace’s spine like the caress of fingernails and blossoms into heat between his thighs, a flurry of wet, swollen petals.

“I can do that,” Jace says. “I can be that for you.” He _aches_ and he needs and he’s _cold_ and he can still feel the demon prince’s hands on his thighs, and he curls his fingers in Simon’s shirt and nuzzles into him, into his warmth, his strength, the promise of safety written into his scent and stance. Simon’s arms close around him and the embrace feels like sanctuary, like holy ground; Jace almost starts crying again with the relief of it. No monsters can get him here. If he’s Simon’s he’s safe, and Jace will spread his legs and beg for it if it means never going back to Hell, and it will be _right_ , this is what he’s supposed to be, where he’s supposed to be— “I can be good, I can be so good, alpha, please let me be, I won’t run away this time, I promise, I swear—”

He buries his face in Simon’s throat, his mouth over the gland there, deliberately exposing himself to the full strength of Simon’s pheromones and Simon hisses with what can only be pleasure-approval. One of his hands flies up to tangle itself in Jace’s hair, holding him there, making him breathe in the wash of hunger-possessive- _mine_ rising from his skin, branding his lungs with it. Jace whimpers at the dizzying, intoxicating taste and spreads his legs, offering up his own scent like a good little o, a proper slut for his alpha, the thick hungry musk of his slick, of his warm inner softness that’s just begging for an alpha cock to nestle deep inside it, where it belongs—and sure enough Simon’s other hand slides down from Jace’s waist, over his ass and Jace’s whole body _tightens_ with want as Simon’s fingers touch him, probe between his thighs and Jace keens, rocking into it, grinding his hardening clit into Simon’s belly.

“Is this what you want?” Simon purrs, and his voice makes Jace shudder, makes his clit twitch and his cunt pulse slick all over Simon’s hand.

 _I want to be a Shadowhunter…_ some part of him thinks, some last lingering spark of defiance—but Jace crushes it quickly, snuffs it out, _no_ , only bad omegas want to be Shadowhunters and bad o’s go to Hell; good omegas get protection and pleasure and Jace can be good, he has to be good, if Simon doesn’t claim him the prince could steal him back and Jace will do anything never to have to go through that again—

And Simon’s fingers slide into him, smooth and easy and perfect and Jace cries out against Simon’s throat, hitching his hips desperately as his alpha’s fingers twist and thrust inside him, coaxing wet, wanton sounds from between his legs. The fingers are warm and solid and _human_ , nothing like the nauseating slither of the prince’s tongue, and Jace gives himself up to it, the golden waves pulsing outwards from his cunt, flooding him, filling him to the brim with needy bliss and it’s so good, this is what he was made for, Simon was right all along—

 _“Yes,”_ Jace manages, breathy and almost keening, almost sobbing, rutting helplessly into the growing bulk of Simon’s knot, swelling against the base of Jace’s clit and loosing fireworks in his brain, in his cunt, his womb aching like a slutty bruise. “I want this, I want _you_ , I want to be yours and take your knot and be so good you keep me, alpha, _alpha_ —”

Without warning Simon yanks his head back and Jace gasps, his knees melting, the pain of his pulled hair transforming into lines of light streaking through his body like stars and when Simon’s mouth comes down on his Jace surges into it, meets him and opens to him and the need is a howl soaring up from his darkest depths, his warm wet womb unsheathing claws of craving that curl Jace’s fingers and knot them in Simon’s hair, drawing him on, drawing him closer, needing-needing. Simon makes a startled sound that dissolves into a low, hungry groan, spilling down Jace’s throat like wine and Jace purrs, pleased, panting, on fire, his alpha’s scent fanning the flames higher and higher with every beat of his heart, every breath; Simon’s tongue fucks his mouth in time with his fingers and Jace trembles, his slick is dripping down his thighs, trailing musky, liquid threads down to his knees and he needs more, he needs _more_ , the ache in his cunt is a scream and Simon’s fingers aren’t _enough_ —

Simon bites Jace’s lip and Jace moans at the graze of his fangs, seraph blade-sharp. “You’ve always been mine,” his alpha snarls, low and viciously soft and Jace’s cunt clamps tight around Simon’s fingers in response. Simon groans and takes Jace’s mouth again, driving his fingers in hard and deep until Jace keens against his lips, his fingers slipping from Simon’s hair to scrabble at his alpha’s jacket, his shirt, off off _off_. “Sammael’s sons, you’ve no idea what it was like, having to watch that stone-wombed _drone_ touch you—another second and I’d have ripped out his fucking tongue and strangled him with it—”

The words pass through Jace like sand through his fingers, meaningless and already gone, he doesn’t care, can’t care, his skin is too tight and throbbing over his bones and he’s rutting between Simon’s groin and his fingers, desperate, pleading whines slipping through their kisses, he needs it, _he needs it_ , and when Simon’s fingers pull out Jace screams into his alpha’s mouth, the emptiness hitting him like the lash of a whip, a physical _agony_ and Simon makes a sound between a groan and a snarl, pure violent want. His slicked fingers close around Jace’s throat and hurl him, no no no he hurls Jace _away_ from him and Jace hits the bed and doesn’t understand, doesn’t care, pushes himself up and he needs Simon back and he’s sobbing, no no no “please, _please_ —”

Simon’s there before Jace can get up, pushing him back down and taking Jace’s mouth again, pinning him and Jace jerks like he’s been electrocuted, the sheer _bliss_ of his alpha’s bulk holding him down indescribable, unbelievable. His legs lock around Simon’s waist and Simon is groaning, ripping at Jace’s shirt and jacket, his nails flash like diamonds and the fabrics give way like water, spilling away from Jace’s skin, leaving him naked and bare before his alpha, yes, _yes_ — “So good for me,” Simon husks, and Jace’s hips grind up, blind and dumb and _wanting_ , all he is is want, need, his alpha’s knot is _right there_ pressing into him and it might as well be pressing on his brain. “Wanted to do this right, you deserved it, but you’re just so fucking _perfect_ —” He lowers his mouth to Jace’s throat and Jace tips his head back automatically, mewling, presses his neck up into Simon’s teeth and Simon _snarls_ , thrusting against him, the denim of his jeans dragging against Jace’s cunt and Jace _wails_.

“Alpha please alpha _please_ , fuck me knot me _knot me_ , please, I need it—!”

Simon snarls again, catches Jace’s thighs and shoves them down onto the bed with impossible strength, unlocking himself from Jace’s grasp. He pulls away and Jace cries out in panic, reaching for him, but Simon’s hand on his chest slams him back down, “No, treasure, wait, _stay_ ,” and Jace sobs but obeys, shuddering, twitching, his slick pooling into a wet spot on the sheets beneath him as Simon discards his jacket, pulls his shirt over his head and throws it away and Jace’s eyes roll back with a moan, tipping his hips up helplessly at the thickened wave of alpha pheromones flooding the room, emanating from all that bared skin like heat from a fire. He glimpses lithe, powerful muscles carved out in hard lines and something about Simon’s smooth chest niggles at him, a thought that itches like dust in an eye but he ignores it, doesn’t care, the sound of Simon’s zipper opening hits him like a bullet and there’s no room in him for anything else. He stays because his alpha told him to but he looks, he _whines_ for it and Simon’s gaze is hot as a brand on him, watching him watch—

As his jeans come down and his underwear with them and his _cock_ , the sight-smell of it turns Jace’s insides to molten gold and he moans desperately, spreading his legs so wide it hurts in an effort to get it inside him faster, where it needs to be, where he needs it, the air is like ice against his white-hot cunt and he feels like the source of a river, as if all of him is wetness and the gushing forth of it and Simon’s trousers tumble over the side of the bed and he’s crawling up to Jace and Jace fists his hands in the sheets so as not to _scream_ with need—

“Good o, so good for me, so perfect,” Simon croons and his cock is thick and long and perfect against his abdomen, the knot still swelling at the base already too thick for Jace’s fingers to get around—but he doesn’t get to try, because Simon grasps Jace’s thighs and dips his head and Jace cries out, he does, there’s no room in him for flashbacks to the last time this happened _(minutes ago, a monster’s tongue twisting up inside him like it wanted to taste his womb from the inside)_ because Simon laps at him with a groan of lust and Jace _spasms_ , no words for the sounds he’s making. “By the Angel you taste so good, so sweet for me, so _wet_ ,” his fingers and tongue taking turns playing with Jace’s cunt and it’s so good Jace _cries_ , thrusting into it, his whole body screaming for more, his brain is dissolving into stardust and white gold and he’s so hot he thinks his tears might be turning to steam on his cheeks—

And Simon’s mouth is hungry on him, starving, devouring, like he’s trying to eat Jace alive, licking and thrusting and his teeth scraping just a little and Jace’s hands are in his hair, white-knuckled with clutching him so tight, he has no idea if he’s trying to pull Simon closer or drag him away but if he doesn’t hold on to something he’ll come apart and fly to _pieces_ and then suddenly Simon stills, stops, his whole body goes rigid and Jace _sobs_. He bucks his hips, pleading for something, _anything_ , but Simon’s hands are suddenly locked around his hips, holding him down, and Jace _writhes_.

“Alpha,” he begs, “alpha, _please_ —”

“You’re in heat,” Simon whispers, his voice satin-rough and his pupils blown and there’s something new in his face, in his scent, a thread of sandalwood and myrrh that curls around Jace’s throat and _chokes_ him; he thought his body was at capacity for sensation but at that scent his every cell lights up like a sun, like a thousand suns, the ache of his womb becomes a ball of searing need and the only reason Jace doesn’t scream is because he can’t get the breath. “You went into heat for me, I can _taste_ it—” He licks his lips and his chin is wet with Jace’s slick and Jace’s clit jerks at the sight, his cunt physically _hurts_ it’s so empty—

Simon _lunges_ up the bed, falls on him like a tiger its prey and Jace wraps around him, meets his savage, bruising kisses as best he can and writhes against Simon’s skin, wanting that scent all over him, needing Simon _in him_ and his cock slides against Jace’s greedy cunt and Jace _wails_ into his alpha’s mouth, crying again, why is his alpha _torturing_ him like this— “They said you always suppressed them but look at you, going into your first heat just for me, so beautiful, so fucking _perfect_ ,” and Jace can taste himself in Simon’s mouth, on his lips and tongue and he shudders with it, cries for it. “Can smell it on you,” Simon growls, biting at Jace’s jaw, his throat, his cock is smearing pre-come on Jace’s groin and Jace’s nails _rake_ Simon’s back, desperate-greedy- _mine, **give it to me**_ , and his alpha snarls approval, “That’s it, fucking claw me, show me how much you need it—” The richness in Simon’s scent surges again, slides down Jace’s throat like the elixir of life and he pants, wanting it, dragging it into his lungs, oh Raziel it’s so good, almost as sweet as the throbbing heat of Simon’s cock and Simon nuzzles him, whispers it like a secret, “do you smell that, treasure, what you’re doing to me, dragging me into rut right alongside you, going to fuck you for _days_ , fuck you till you catch for me—”

The words burst like solar flares in his head and Jace’s cunt _convulses_ , his hips jerk up and a gasp rips out of his throat and yes, _“yes!”_ , keening for it, for all of it, _strong mate, the strongest_ and the thought of being bred by him is, is—it’s everything he’s ever wanted _(isn’t it?)_ everything he’s _made_ for, he wants it so sharply it’s almost painful, to be big and swollen and full of his alpha’s pups like a good o, the _best_ — “Yes, do it, alpha, _Simon_ , fuck me, breed me, knock me up—” The words are just tumbling from his lips, he’s scrabbling at Simon’s back, rocking and grinding and half-sobbing for trying to get his alpha’s cock inside him, “do it, _do it_ , give me your pups, I want them, they’re _mine_ , I’ll make them so pretty for you, please, breed me full, alpha, _alpha_ —”

It’s like being in the cage all over again: Simon’s snarl seems to shake the earth and then Jace is on his front, picked up and flipped over like a doll and he’s gasping, rutting into the soft sheets, sobbing at the friction on his clit and his alpha is on top of him, looping an arm around his waist to drag his ass up, kicking his legs open wide and Jace’s vision is swimming, it’s so warm, so hot in here, he’s burning up and he wouldn’t notice the symbol carved into the headboard except that it looks like his ring, the Wayland ring lost in the bag the demons took from him—except the W is upside down, someone made it look like an M, how ridiculous—

“I will,” his alpha is saying, hoarse and hungry, “going to knock you up your very first time, treasure, be your first and last and _only_ and make sure you’re never empty again, always full of knot or pups or both—”

And then Simon mounts him, covering him, his too-smooth chest against Jace’s back and his cock, his _cock_ , the head of it nudges Jace’s cunt, parts his lips and Jace is hyperventilating, it pushes in and he _screams_ , in and in and _in_ and he’s wanted this forever, craved it since his first breath and never knew it, the velvety hardness sliding home like a key into a lock, made for it, he was made for it, it fits _just right_ and he’s sobbing with how good it feels, he can’t believe it, every cell of his body is dissolving into seraphfire and singing praise and the scent of his alpha is all around him, strong and sure, wrapped around him like wings—

His alpha growls as he slides home and Jace moans, helpless, loving it, his cunt contracting with ripples of pleasure, drooling slick all over Simon’s knot—by the Angel, his _knot_ , hot and throbbing against the rim of Jace’s hole, teasing him, sweet and _maddening_ so that Jace can’t do anything but push back against it, whimpering. He whines when Simon grabs his hips to restrain him, squirming, his alpha’s hot breath panting against the back of his neck and making him shiver.

“Such a good little o,” his alpha croons, “so good, I know you want it but not just yet, treasure, we need to fuck you open first—” His hips are already swaying as he speaks, shifting his cock, stroking it in and out and Jace keens, the friction is, is, every nerve ending in his body has been diverted to his cunt and it’s all pleasure, warm honey flowing through his veins as Simon’s stroking thrusts get longer, bit by bit, his hips pulling back more and more on each thrust only to glide back in, rocking in and out and the slide is silk, the slide is heaven, so good, illegally good, Jace is addicted from the first and only Simon’s strong hands keep him from battering himself open on his alpha’s gorgeous, amazing, divine cock. The knot meets his cunt on every thrust like a kiss and his insides flutter for it, the pressure makes him claw the sheets and moan and the scent of his alpha’s rut gets stronger and stronger, thicker and thicker and Jace drinks it in, pants it into his lungs as the smooth rolling of Simon’s hips starts to stutter.

Jace moans as one thrust hammers home harder than the others and he squirms as much as his alpha’s grip allows, needing, needing “more, _more_ , alpha give it to me, fuck me, breed me _full,”_ and he clenches down deliberately, instinctively as Simon slides in and his alpha _snarls_ —

And Jace cries out as the next thrust slams into him, hard enough to bruise his hips and stretch his cunt around Simon’s knot for a blisteringly-good half-second—and then it’s gone but only for an instant, it comes back almost at once, no more slow sweet teasing his alpha is _taking_ him, owning him, his cock tearing into Jace over and over and his knot beats against Jace’s slutty hole like the perfect punishment, pounding, searing, all of that delicious alpha strength turned to fucking Jace _raw_ —let loose and _using_ him, sheathing his cock between Jace’s thighs like it’s all he’s good for, all he’s _for_ , Jace is sobbing with pleasure and when Simon lets him go he moves back into every thrust immediately, as much as he can, clumsy with inexperience and how much he wants it and mindless with want, with need, with _alpha alpha **alpha**!_

“Is this what you want?” Simon snarls, vicious and terrible and glorious and Jace moans a wordless affirmative, yes, oh yes, yes, _yes!_ “Sucking at my knot like a slut but only for me, no one else has ever had you and no one else ever will, you’re _mine_ , born for me, I’ll murder anyone who touches you, anyone who even _looks_ at you,” and his knot is so big now, with every thrust Jace opens a little wider for it, a little more and a little more and Jace writhes, slamming himself against it, trying, needing, Raziel Raziel _Raziel_. “Going to be so pretty pregnant for me, aren’t you, pretty little dam, pretty little _breeder_ hanging off my cock, Fallen, look at you, take it, treasure, _take it_ —”

And Jace does.

It’s even larger than Simon’s fist was but he stretches and stretches, he opens like a good little o and he screams as it _pops_ through the rim of him, tears of pleasure and pain on his cheeks and he screams and screams, shattering, destroyed by unholy rapture. He comes and hardly notices; it’s a star being born between his legs, wave after wave of light pulsing through his entire body and turning him to gold, to diamond, to purest white fire, every atom of him gilded and shining with its own halo and it’s like being fisted by the hand of God, he sees heaven and knows it’s real and he cries aloud to his deity, his Lucifer, his alpha, “Simon, _Simon—!”_

It goes on and on forever, and when he comes back to himself it’s to a body enslaved, addicted as surely as a junkie to the hormones rushing through his blood, the pleasure still rippling through him bright and blinding. There’s no methadone for this and he doesn’t care, moans his dumb bliss into the sheets—when did he fall into them, when did he collapse, hanging off his alpha’s throbbing knot like a soaked toy—as his cunt gulps and swallows around the huge, mind-melting sweetness embedded between his legs.

But not still. His alpha is still rocking against him, groaning, his knot locked in so tight it can only shift a centimetre or two but it’s enough, it’s so good. Jace whines and tries to move his hips into it, encouraging, and his alpha croons; his approval strokes down Jace’s spine like a pair of lips.

“…wanted to do this right,” Simon is saying, almost slurring with his own pleasure and Jace hums. “You deserved to have it all be perfect, so I tried, I asked father for your hand and everything—but he said no, so what was I sup’osed to do? He would have stopped me coming for you. ’S not allowed, you’re _mine.”_

His hips snap harder, dragging the thick bulk of his knot against the inside of Jace’s cunt, and Jace shudders, boneless. Something…something about what his alpha’s saying… It’s important…

…Did he say _‘father’?_

“I’ll take such good care of you,” Simon pants. “You won’t be like mother, you’re so much stronger than she was, and I’m not like the other princes—we won’t even have to burn off your runes, they won’t hurt our pups, they’ll be able to bear Marks like me—and you’ll be such a good dam, treasure, my perfect _kunnarnatar_ , going to breed you so full—”

Mother. _Other princes_. Simon’s knot is scraping at Jace’s brain with every minute thrust but—but—

The sharp prettiness of his face, like the demon prince’s—

The way his scent terrifies other demons—

The Vetis called him _lord_ —

 _‘You cannot possess a_ kunnarnatar _who is already claimed by one of the royal caste—’_

The diamond-gleam of his nails, like a demon prince’s claws—

The sigil on the bed board, not just _like_ Jace’s ring but _the_ _same_ —

 _Father_ , not ‘my father’—

 _Mother_ , not ‘my mother’—

And he realises, finally, why the sight of Simon’s chest bothered him—the pale smoothness, muscled and Marked but his pectorals—they’re as bare and featureless as the prince’s were—

“No,” he whispers, understanding, finally, comprehending at last, _demon prince, my brother and a **demon** **prince** ,_ “no, _no!”_ He’s drowning, terror like an arctic ocean closing over his head and no, _no_ , Raziel no _please_ I was good, _I was good_ and Jace scrambles up out of the sheets, onto all fours to get away, to try just as Simon’s hips snap against him, as Simon’s hands grasp him and pull him in close and deep inside, locked inside Jace’s slutty, whorish, _gullible_ body Simon’s knot pulses and he _comes_ , a thick rush of awful-sick-no-no-no liquid poison and Jace wails with anguish, with despair like a knife in his throat, no, _no_ , please-no-don’t but it’s already too late—Simon comes and comes and he’s still grinding against Jace’s ass and Jace is sobbing with horror, writhing with stomach-heaving disgust that just makes Simon groan—wriggling over his knot like a slut, the worst kind of slut, no no no it’s in him he can’t get away from it and his cunt is milking Simon’s knot even as he cries, his body is purring with sated pleasure even as a demon prince’s seed spills hot and toxic into his womb, their children, by the Angel their _children_ , incestuous demons _no_ , please Raziel _no_ —

 _“Why,”_ he cries, tears falling like stars with no wishes left, “why would you, how could you, _why,”_ and Simon’s knot throbs again, shoots another stream of come at Jace’s cervix and Jace retches, shuddering, shaking like he’s about to break, no, no, _no_. “I was good, I was _g-good_ —”

“You were, you _are,”_ Simon croons, and Jace sobs as Simon pets him—impaled on a demon prince’s knot, taking his seed like a breeder whore, like a _kunnarnatar_ bitch-queen, his stomach is starting to swell with Simon’s come as he shudders against Jace again, as he comes _again_ — “You’re the only one good enough, treasure,” Simon says huskily. “You’re _mine.”_

“I’m not, I’m _not,”_ Jace sobs, shaking his head in desperate, useless denial. “I’m, I’m—”

 _“Mine,”_ Simon breathes—and before Jace can say another word, before he can even take a breath there’s a pain in his neck, Simon’s fangs sinking into his throat, and Jace screams as the icy burn of bonding venom floods his veins.

Blood trickles from the bite, and Simon’s come streams into him, and he screams and screams and screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That completes the story! There will be another chapter, but chapter three is an alternate ending, not a continuation. You are, of course, free to read both and decide which ending you prefer, if either.
> 
> Like I said before, this fic is/was an excuse to write all my dirtiest kinks, but there WAS a bit of backstory - in short, Simon is the son of an omega!Jocelyn (who died giving birth to him) and a demon prince Valentine summoned and trapped for his experiments. (So Simon and Jace are only half-siblings, if that makes it any better.) He looks human because he was born on earth, not in Hell. He was raised apart from Jace, who eventually ended up with the Lightwoods; Simon decided he wanted Jace for his mate, tried to do things 'properly' by asking Valentine for permission, and killed Valentine when he (obviously) said no. And then followed Jace to New York to claim him.
> 
> Simon's saliva, from when he licked Jace's sex in the alleyway in 'Bend', is what the demon prince tasted when it tongue-fucked Jace. Among his other abilities, Simon can portal himself back and forth from Hell and wield lilithium blades, which are the Infernal version of seraph blades borrowed from the Runed verse. And it's his lack of nipples which finally clues Jace in to what he is. 
> 
> IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE NIPPLES!
> 
> ...It may be four am and I may be extremely tired, hush.
> 
> If you are considering reading 'Shatter' when it is posted, PLEASE remember to check out the chapter notes for it, which will contain all the chapter-specific trigger warnings. It's going to be a WHOLE LOT WORSE than 'Break' was!


	3. Shatter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an alternate ending to part one, Break, and basically nobody should read it ever. This is sicker than anything I knew I was capable of and I urge anyone even the slightest bit concerned NOT TO READ IT. Please read the warnings below and think long and hard about whether you really want to read something this depraved. 
> 
> In this ending, Jace gets dragged to Hell - and Simon doesn't rescue him. 
> 
> **WARNINGS: rape, non-consensual oral/vaginal/anal, forced feeding, non-consensual public sex, gang rape, non-consensual body modification (piercings and a tattoo), non-consensual collaring, loss of bodily autonomy (bodies moved at/responding to the will or commands of others), orgasm denial, forced orgasms, body horror, victim blaming, suicidal thoughts/impulses/desires, non-consensual fisting, bestiality (or whatever you'd call non-sentient!demon/human sex), non-consensual demon or monster/human sex, tentacle sex, sex slavery, forced impregnation, breeding kink, objectification, feminine/sexual slurs (bitch/slut/whore, although 'bitch' is really used in the sense of an animal, not as a feminine slur), mind-break/brainwashing, knotting, unhappy ending.** If I've missed any, let me know.
> 
> Notes on pronouns: ney/nem/neir and je/jer/jes are just some of the pronouns used for demonic genders, equivalent to he/him/his. There are a five biological demon genders and the pronouns are specific to a demon’s gender and caste (so there’s a whole lot more than five pronouns) but since Jace mostly just refers to them all as ‘it’ you only need to recognise those two.
> 
> Xe/xem/xyr is the angelic pronoun in this story.

 

The portal is a mouth and it swallows Jace whole, scream and all; the demons drag him through it and he can almost feel himself tasted, savoured, the throat of some immense alien monster contracting around him and pulling him in, drawing him inexorably down into its belly, its darkness. He fights desperately but he can’t stop it, it’s too strong and he’s too weak and a burnt sky unfolds above his head, stretching endlessly above charred earth and he can feel it like a kind of anti-magnetism, how much this world hates and hungers for him and his blood revolts within his veins, his stomach heaves, this can’t be happening, _it can’t be happening_ —

But the gleaming cage waiting for him is all too convincing.

He struggles, screaming as if it could do any good, but there are too many of them, far too many; they rip his bag from his back and hurl him into the cage and the bars lock behind him, not with a lock of metal but a tangle of spiky, vicious-looking runes and Jace springs back up instantly, hurls himself at the door before his heart has finished its beat but it’s no good, he knows it the moment he hits the metal, it _will not give_ and the portal is _right there_ , so close but shrinking before his eyes—he can see the subway tracks and a slice of the platform, briefcases and manicured nails and sneakers and candy wrappers and dirty flyers and it’s all dwindling, the edges of the portal contracting like burning paper, crumpling in on itself and that’s his world, _that’s his world_ and he can’t reach it and he can’t breathe and it’s closing, no, closing, _no!_

It snaps shut like a fanged mouth and it’s as if the teeth close on _him_ , tearing through him, savage and devouring and no, Raziel _no_ , he screams and throws himself against the cage again but it’s gone, it’s already gone and it’s never coming back, his world, his life, never never never and his fists are beating the bars, no please _no_ , his throat burns from screaming and the cage rocks with the force of his terror and the pain is nothing, the pain bursting in his hands is nothing because he has to get out he has to get away, this isn’t real, it can’t be real, the portal, his world, he has to, he _has_ to—

His hands are bleeding, his finger-bones splintering against the metal, and he hardly notices, he’s still screaming when the demons pull him against the bars and force a draught of something bitter and oily between his teeth, down his throat, he chokes on it and darkness spirals through him, thick and cruel, overwhelming.

It takes him over, closes around his mind like a fist, and everything goes mercifully, terribly black.

*

He wakes to find it was not a nightmare.

His cage is moving, trundling along on the uneven ground. It has wheels he did not notice before, and when he sits up he stares blankly at the four Raveners hitched to it like horses to a cart. He’s never seen anything like it before, automatically finds himself cataloguing the harnesses they wear, worn but carefully cared for, ingeniously designed to take advantage of the strength of the scorpion-like monsters.

Where are they taking him?

But even as he thinks it, the answer hits him like a bullet; it closes around his throat like a fist, twists into his cunt like a knife. There’s only one thing demons want Nephilim omegas for, and if he wants specifics then the evidence is all over him; he’s still dressed, and when he looks he sees the _voyance_ rune still on the back of his left hand _(healed now, good as new, was it the potion that fixed his injuries or something else?)_. No Infernal conception can survive in a body Marked with the Angel’s runes; that they haven’t removed his Marks yet means these demons don’t want him for themselves.

They’re taking him to a demon prince.

The crush of terror at the realisation is so immobilising Jace can’t even think past it; it squeezes his brain like a vise of rusted iron and a scream catches in his throat like broken glass, emerges as a whimper. His understanding of his own helplessness is mercury in his veins, cold and sick and toxic; this was never supposed to happen. This was never supposed to be _possible_ , there were so many failsafes in place to make sure he was dead before he ever saw this side of a Hellmouth, but here he is in a cage being taken to the one thing in all the worlds he’d rather die than face, the one thing in all the worlds he has a _responsibility_ to die rather than face—and there’s nothing he can do about it. The worst monster Hell has to offer is going to break him open on its cock and force him to birth more monsters just like it, as many as it can get out of him before his body breaks for good, and all Jace can do is pray to Raziel that his body gives out quickly.

He curls up on the floor of his cage to hide his face from his escort, and cries as quietly as he can.

*

There is no way home. No matter what happens, Jace is never going home. He’ll never escape. Even if he got out of the cage, even if he somehow lost his escort, even if he could avoid being captured by some other monster eager to forge a new royal lineage between his thighs, Jace has no way of getting back to his own world. He’ll never see Alec or Izzy or Maryse and Robert or Hodge and Church ever again. New York is so far away it might as well not exist; a dream-city, a place in a story someone whispered once.

He sees the portal close over and over behind his eyes, and it never stops being a hammer to the heart.

 *

This can’t be real.

*

He is in a cage, in Hell, being taken to a demon prince—a monster who will rape him and breed him and send the creatures he births to slaughter people in any one of a thousand different worlds. His womb will be an instrument of death, a weapon of war, directly responsible for untold suffering, for too many deaths to estimate. And there is nothing he can do about it, because he is not a person with agency, he is a _thing_ ; a warm hole for cock, an incubator with legs, something that can be picked up off the street and given gift-wrapped in a cage to someone else.

It seems so obvious now. His helplessness makes everything so clear. He stares at the bars and can almost see the pattern of it, perfect as a fable; he rejected Simon, the perfect Shadowhunter alpha, and now his fate is to be the cock-sheath of a monster. He didn’t want Simon’s pups, so he’s going to spend the rest of his life breeding and birthing demon spawn. It’s neat and tidy and even comes with a moral, simple enough for even his shell-shocked mind to grasp: this is what he’s _for_. All the rest, everything else, was just a game the world let him play for a little while—but then he wouldn’t stop playing, and now here he is.

He rejected his purpose, and now that purpose is going to be twisted past all bearing, instead of giving the world more precious Shadowhunters he’s going to give it monsters and it’s all his own fault, he’s the only one responsible, and the guilt wracks him just as strongly as the horror.

All the people who’ll die, all the evil his get will wreak, just because he thought he was too good to lie down for an alpha.

*

He _deserves_ this. That’s the unescapable truth. He deserves it. For his arrogance, his laughable delusions, his pride. For thinking he could be anything but what Raziel made him.

He’s not sure if that’s what hurts the most, but it hurts.

*

He doesn’t hope for escape. Even if he somehow got away from this little convoy, he has no way to get back to his own dimension; sooner or later some other demons would find him, and either take him to their own liege lord or use him themselves. Any demon, no matter how low-caste, can make itself the sire of a new royal lineage if it gets its hands on a Nephilim omega. It’s horrifying enough to contemplate being used to perpetuate an already existing monster pedigree; thinking about being responsible for a new breed of demon prince is even worse. At least the current lines are all catalogued by the Nephilim. A new lineage could wreak untold damage before the Shadowhunters learned its weaknesses.

But death—death is something he can hope for. He should be dead already; he’s _supposed_ to be dead already. When he presented as omega and gained permission to continue his Shadowhunter training, Alec and Izzy had to take an oath that they would kill him before letting him be dragged through a Hellmouth; Jace himself has been ready to cut his own throat rather than let Hell get its claws on his womb since he was fourteen years old. He may deserve what a demon prince will do to him, but no one deserves to be at the mercy of what he spawns. He _has_ to die before he gets pregnant.

If he can just get to his bag he can have his _itsemurha_ dagger through his own heart before they can stop him…

*

Jace can’t see any difference in the sky or their surroundings, but occasionally the demons stop moving for a while. Some will remain with the cage and the big mounts while the rest disappear into the plateau, and when they come back it’s always with a handful of smaller, still-squealing demons, legs or wings or other limbs broken and immobilised.

Jace closes his eyes and holds his hands over his ears as they feed. The shrieks of the little ones as they’re ripped apart will haunt his nightmares for as long as he’s got left.

_(He made the mistake of leaving his eyes open, the first time, wondering if his captors might let their guards down while they ate. Never again. He still can’t unsee the ones who mounted their prey even as they ate them, can’t unhear the screams. He has no sympathy for demons of any kind, but the evil of it is too much.)_

_(If he’s lucky, maybe the demon prince will do that to him, forget itself and kill him while he’s broken open on its cock. If Jace can’t kill himself before they reach wherever they’re going, it’s probably the best he can hope for.)_

They bring him some of the meat, raw and still bleeding; thrust it through the bars at him. He shakes his head—maybe he can starve himself to death if he can’t get a weapon—and they let it go, the first time. And the second.

The third time he refuses to eat, one of them holds him against the bars while another forces bites of the raw, bitter meat down his throat, holding his mouth open with its claws. Jace tries to scream, fights and writhes and his stomach heaves, heaves and keeps heaving, the sick sweetness of demon ichor thick as oil in his mouth as chunk after chunk of _demon meat_ is pushed over his tongue, and he can’t even process the horror, the unspeakable taboo, the helplessness of being held still and forced full and he sobs. They hold him open and his jaw aches and his whole body shudders with disgust-revulsion, but they don’t stop until his stomach is heavy and full, and then they hold his mouth shut until he stops trying to throw it all up again.

What will it do to him, what will it _do_ , by the Angel his body is already beginning to digest it, it’ll be in his blood and bone, he’ll never get it out, he feels so sick, and when his captors leave him alone Jace cries and cries, wishing he was home, wishing he was dead.

*

It’s probably shallow and pathetic of him that he feels even worse later, when he has to use the necessary.

They don’t let him out of the cage. Don’t even pay attention.

He has to go through the bars, and the humiliation is like drinking bleach, but the despair is more bitter still.

If they won’t let him out of the cage, he has no way to get a weapon, no chance to kill himself.

*

He falls asleep. He wakes up. The terror never grows numb. The horror never fades.

*

The Nephilim don’t know much about demon princes, but Jace goes over and over what he knows. They’re the ruling caste, capable of compelling other demons to do their bidding. They can work magic, and for all intents and purposes they’re immortal—kill one, and its body will just reform in the spaces between worlds. They can spawn other demons like hive queens, but the only way to make new demon princes is to rape a Nephilim omega. Princes with royal parents are more powerful than those sired by lower-caste demons on Nephilim victims.

They’re supposed to be beautiful. Terrifyingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. Jace isn’t sure he believes that. How can a demon be beautiful? All demons are hideous. It’s a natural law.

The only Nephilim who knew more about demon princes never returned to tell anyone, so Jace does not know where or how the ruling caste lives. But he’s about to join the number of those who discovered it for themselves.

There is no mountain fortress, no castle. Only a hole in the ground banded with what looks like obsidian teeth, but the crystals hum at a pitch that makes Jace sick with nausea and he knows they must be some Infernal stone, nothing natural, nothing true. The teeth part as Jace and his little band draw closer, and it hits Jace again that this is real, not a nightmare he will wake up from—the Raveners pull his cage onto a wide spiral staircase descending into the pit and Jace’s heart threatens to explode in his chest, beating hard and fast with fear like nothing he’s ever known and he’s never been afraid of the dark but he wants to scream as this false mouth closes over him, as he slides into its dark throat like something to be savoured.

Above, the teeth close. The mouth swallows him whole, and the darkness strikes him blind.

It’s terrifying. Utterly, appallingly terrifying. He can hear the clatter of his wheeled cage, the insectile skittering of the Raveners, the footsteps of the demons who captured him and their hideous mounts, but he can see nothing, absolutely nothing. It strikes him that it might always be like this—he might never see light again, and somehow that makes it worse, impossibly it gets _worse_. To be raped in the dark, blind and even more helpless than he already is; to give birth groping and sightless— maybe it would be a mercy to never have to see the creatures the demon prince will sire on him, but it would be worse, it would be _worse_ to be lost always in the darkness, to never know anything but the sensation of a demon’s cock pushing into him, to never know anything else ever again—

He almost starts crying with relief when a dim glow takes form somewhere ahead of them; despite everything, he finds himself pathetically grateful. They must have left the staircase behind, because gradually he sees that they are in a tunnel now, packed here and there with a fungus that glows grey, and another that burns red like embers. It is an ugly light but Jace is just glad to be able to see at all.

The smallest of mercies.

He has time to grow scared again by the time the tunnel opens up into a huge cavern.

It is very clearly a throne room of some kind. There is fire here, burning black and green and violet; it rings the room, licks the walls like ever-shifting tapestries. More demons than Jace has ever seen in his life crowd the stone space, of more kinds than he can name, more horrors than a lifetime of nightmares could ever produce; there are spikes and slime, scales and vicious claws, alligator snouts and barbed tails and creatures that look like a thousand worms twisted together into something vaguely humanoid. And they are all watching him.

But Jace hardly has eyes for them, because the demon prince is watching him too.

It is sitting on a throne made of the same sickening black crystal as the teeth guarding this place, and it is beautiful, and its beauty is more horrifying than everything up to this point put together; it hooks under Jace’s breastbone like a tangle of scythes, a cold, sharp, agonising pull that threatens to break his bones. In form the prince is recognisably human, without scales or extra limbs or even a tail, and Jace’s gut roils, thinking of the poor omega dam from whom that template must have been inherited. And there are traces of omegine beauty in it, in the porcelain-fine cheekbones, the delicate-sharp lines of its androgynous face. But it is not human, could not be mistaken for anything human; it is over eight feet tall and its skin gleams like an opal, milky-pale and shot with shimmers of colour like cold, icy rainbows; its hands are tipped with claws like diamonds. Jace thinks at first the stuff growing from its head is hair, but then it moves and he realises it is a mass of tendrils like the petals of a sea anemone, black as squid ink and with a sheen like oil, long enough to reach the demon’s waist: no doubt they are just as toxic as a real anemone’s.

_(He thinks of being wrapped in a writhing cloud of those slick tentacles, held trapped for his own ravishment; he wonders what it will feel like to give birth to such a thing, if the tendrils will writhe and scrabble at his insides, and has to swallow hard so as not to be sick.)_

Draped over the sides of the great chair are a pair of wings like a dragonidae’s, huge sweeps of ebony that frame the prince’s paleness like curtains of dark satin. Jace automatically tries to estimate their size; it’s what he’s trained for, to memorise all the details of an unfamiliar demon so he can look it up later, or add it to the Nephilim’s archives if it’s never been seen before. The wings have multiple joints and more diamond-splinter claws at their tips and apexes, and he guesses they might be forty or fifty feet wide when fully extended. The prince’s white chest has no nipples, but does have a navel, and Jace’s insides go cold, imagining bearing a thing like this inside him, growing a placenta all unwilling to tie it to his blood. He can’t see what might wait for him between its legs because the prince is wearing a kind of skirt, a long wrap of what might be silk or might be a demon’s skin, for all Jace knows. It hides everything from the prince’s waist down, but for the taloned feet.

Its eyes are black. Wholly black, with no whites.

“Are you finished admiring me?” the demon asks, and its voice is velvety and amused and Jace starts, flinches back against the corner of his cage before he can help himself, and a wave of cruel, demonic laughter sweeps through the cavern, hissing and chittering.

“It is shy,” the prince comments, and again that laughter, and Jace feels his cheeks burn; humiliated, terrified tears sting his eyes, and he wants to be brave and defiant and mocking but he can’t be, he _can’t_. He can hardly breathe as the demon prince rises from its throne, wings sweeping behind it like a cloak, and walks closer to Jace’s cage. Its talons click on the stone floor, and Jace can’t breathe and can’t think through the sheer, unbelievable terror of it, of being approached by this thing, _watched_ by it, and he wishes its face was strange enough that he couldn’t recognise its hunger but it isn’t and he can, and it is the worst thing, the worst thing in the _world_ —

 _Be brave be brave, you’re a Shadowhunter don’t shame Raziel by being a coward, face it like an alpha—_ but he’s not an alpha and he is a coward after all, because the prince’s hand slides through the bars and Jace whines with fear, fights to get away from it and sobs because he can’t, because there’s nowhere to go but his corner and it’s not far enough to keep him safe. Those claws snag in his shirt and drag him closer like a cat might a mouse, like his weight is nothing, like his _resistance_ is nothing but an amusing game to indulge in, and the tears spill down his cheeks as he’s forced face to face with his new master-mate.

“What lovely jewels you make for me, treasure,” the prince murmurs, touching one gem-like claw to his cheek, and Jace flinches, shudders, Simon called him treasure too and the reminder twists like a knife. “Shall we take that as a good omen? A sign that your womb will make jewels for me too?”

It smiles as Jace sobs, trying to be quiet but wracked by horror, wrecked by it. He shakes his head desperately but the demon croons, “Oh, I think it will. I think you’ll make a lovely _kunnarnatar_ , little Nephilim.”

It pats his cheek and withdraws to go talk to the demons who captured him, and it takes Jace’s fear-frozen brain minutes to translate the word it used, its meaning cobbled together from Hodge’s lessons. All Shadowhunters are supposed to learn three or four demonic languages and Jace wishes that they didn’t because he’d be happier not knowing, a fresh spill of tears streaks his face when he finally makes sense of it: _bitch-queen_ , it called him, royal breeder, priceless but mindless, a living incubator. Because that’s what he is now, what he will be, one of the prince’s minions is pouring pearls and copper coins into the hands of his captors and they’re selling him like an animal, he fought his whole life to be more than the pups he could birth but he was wrong, in the end it’s the only value he has—

But why, _why_ did he run from Simon, he could be at home mated to a Shadowhunter if he’d only stayed—not here, not damned to _this_ —

With the payment exchanged, four demons lift his cage up off its wheeled base and set it—him—on the ground. The demons who captured him are leaving, vanishing back up the tunnel without a glance back, and Jace feels a twisted kind of panic, a _no don’t leave me!_ impulse as mad as it is useless. But they feel like the only illusion of safety in this entire world and then they’re gone, and he is so small and fragile in his cage, a crushable insect in front of the demon prince’s black, hungry gaze.

Its claws brush the rune-lock on the cage door, and it swings open. “Out you come, _kunnarnatar,”_ it croons, and Jace can’t help it, he cries out in unfeigned terror as its hand closes around his leg, he tries to clutch at the bars but it drags him out like a cat with a mouse and he isn’t brave and he isn’t defiant, he’s seventeen and terrified and he’d rather die, _he’d rather die_ —

The demon hauls him out onto the floor on his back and Jace can’t look away from it, struggling-scrambling to get up and get away but the monster’s hand might as well be a manacle and it’s like watching an oncoming train, seeing it kneel down in its skirt as it draws him closer with ease, as if he’s only a doll, a kitten, something small and weak and helpless—

 _(He_ is _small and weak and helpless)_

—and then its claws are running over his body from heel to throat and his mind is so thick with fear it takes him a beat to understand, a second to process his clothes being rent like paper, falling away from him, the prince leaning over him and “No!” The scream tears out of him like broken glass and he’s almost to his feet before the demon hooks its claws around his ankles and drags him back, sends him crashing back against the ground like a clumsy child and draws him back where it wants him, “no no no no don’t, please don’t, please, leave me alone, leave me alone!”

His cries break into a despairing wail as the prince shoves Jace’s legs apart and he’s never felt so afraid, so humiliated, the weight of the Infernal crowd’s eyes nothing to the prince’s hungry gaze inspecting his cunt. Jace is shaking and shaking, can’t make himself stop, sobs twisting through his chest and aborted, useless struggles as the tendril-tentacles of its hair wrap rope-like around his ankles, soft and silky but muscular and strong, yanking his legs up. Its hands slide over his thighs and Jace jerks, sobbing, _no_ , not like this, not so soon, it’s going to rape him right here with a thousand witnesses watching and he can’t, please, _don’t_ —

But no, it is still only examining him; its claws slip delicately into his sex and Jace freezes, his body locking in place at the memory of their sharpness. They pry him open and he trembles, hardly daring to breathe, shame and icy fear twisting like a noose around his neck; one wrong move, one twitch, and those claws could slice him open as easily as they did his clothes.

“Lovely,” the demon murmurs. It is not quite an alpha’s croon but it sounds something like it, enough that the approval sends a ripple of something sick and shameful down Jace’s spine and into his belly. He blinks back his tears of relief as the claws withdraw, but the tentacles don’t let him go, he’s still on his back with his legs in the air and the prince is leaning forward and Jace panics anew, it _is_ going to, going to, “no,” he begs, “no, please, _please_ —”

But the prince’s skirt stays in place as the demon bends down, and down, and Jace understands a bare half-second before the prince’s mouth seals over his cunt and he _screams_ , revulsion and sick, shocked sensation tearing through his body and he convulses, horrified, no no no _no_ , it’s a demon, a _demon_ sucking and lapping violently at his sex, hard and rough as if it means to devour him, and Jace flashes back to the demons he saw fucking their prey as they ate them and his stomach heaves. It doesn’t, it’s, he can’t, it’s horrible and he’s crying and the creature’s hair is wrapping around his clit, fondling him with a terrible familiarity, stroking and constricting, _milking_ him until he hardens, helplessly, his stupid slutty body unable to resist. He can’t believe it’s happening, can’t believe it feels, it feels, he _hates_ himself, he’s a slut, it’s a _demon_ and it should matter but it doesn’t, he can feel himself growing wet, softening against the monster’s mouth, his wracking shudders gradually melting into shivers of anguished pleasure. He sobs but his body opens to it and there’s nothing he can do and he never thought of this, all the horrors he imagined and he never foresaw this, that he might _like_ it, he thought the worst would be pain but it isn’t, it _isn’t_ —

And then the prince’s tongue is not licking but pushing, prying at his slick softness and Jace _jerks_ , crying out with disgusted bliss, tears blurring his vision; its tongue slithers into him like a snake and he’s going to be sick, he’s going to be _sick_ but it feels so good, so wrong and so good, a velvety ribbon that squirms and writhes its way inside him, deeper and deeper, so slender that it doesn’t hurt at all and it’s silk around his clit, squeezing and stroking and Jace doesn’t even notice when his hips start to rock into it, just a little, it’s so, it’s so, oh, _oh_. His cries get higher, breathier, it’s, so long, in so deep, the tongue laps slyly at his cervix and his cunt _clenches_ around it, he mewls and _wants_ and at some point his eyes have fallen closed, his legs have gone limp and boneless where they’re held up and his head is tipped back, lolling, lost in the sensation between his legs, the slick, hot pleasure twisting up inside him, it’s, it’s—

The forked tip of that tongue flicks and teases the tiny opening of his cervix, over and over, undulating and rubbing its length against Jace’s softness and Jace’s lips part around a moan just as it shoves its way through, forces itself through his cervix and up into his womb and the moan breaks into a cry, shocked and hurt, it’s not agony but it aches like a bruise and his eyes fly open, he looks down and—

And sees the face buried between his thighs, the cloud of inky black tendrils writhing around the prince’s head, wrapped around Jace’s clit, his own hips rocking sluttishly into that silky grasp, the serpentine tongue that’s tasting the inside of his womb and no, no, it feels so good, how can it, how can he _like_ this, no, don’t, his legs spread for a demon’s tongue like the worst kind of slut, it’s a demon, it’s a _demon_ and Jace is, Jace is—

He’s coming.

He comes helplessly, horribly, a choking wave of sweet heat that makes him ripple around the demon’s tongue, contracting and squeezing and his clit spasming in the grip of its hair—but it’s a sour bliss, bitter and toxic and the shame of it whips him, scores his soul and leaves him bleeding. He came for a _demon_ , he came on its _tongue_ , it was inside him—it’s still inside him—and he _liked_ it, how could he _like_ it, what kind of sick twisted creature _is_ he?

He’s crying when it pulls out of him, when it slides its silken tongue free from the grasp of his slutty, degenerate body. It lets him go and Jace curls up on his side, sobbing with humiliation and self-loathing, sickened by the golden aftershocks still purring through his cunt. He squeezes his legs together tightly, trying to quench the feeling, and his thighs are wet with the demon’s saliva and his own slick, and the prince laughs at him.

“A ripe one,” it tells his subjects, and Jace doesn’t think he’s imagining the note of smugness in its voice. There are hisses and growls of approval and Jace shuts his eyes, his face burning, sick with shame. They saw, all of them saw him moaning for their liege lord like he wanted it—

_(He did want it)_

The prince calls some other monster over to it, and when Jace peeks he recognises the demon who paid off Jace’s kidnappers. Its lower body resembles a giant spider, black and viscera-purple and scaled in something like bone; each leg ends in a vicious claw. Above the waist it is more or less humanoid, with skin the colour of a bruise and two pairs of arms, and a mouth that takes up the lower half of its head, bracketed by terrible pincers; it has eight red eyes set like jewels in its horrible face. He has no idea what caste or breed it might be; he’s never seen or heard of anything like it.

But it must be some trusted servant or advisor, because in Tartarian the prince tells it, “Have it cleaned and prepared, Tenebra. And choose a selection for the opening, yes?”

It strokes a hand over Jace’s hip and thigh, and Jace whimpers, flinching away from the touch.

“Might I suggest gold for the rings, my prince?” Tenebra’s voice is a hissing, sibilant thing. “It would suit your bitch’s colouring.”

“Nothing less would do it justice,” the prince agrees, and its amusement is threaded with a low, rough hunger that makes bile rise in Jace’s throat.

“And the opening ceremony? Have you any preferences, my prince?”

“I would have you stand for the _herra_ of course. As for the rest, I defer to your judgement.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Opening ceremony? Rings? Surely they don’t mean wedding rings, or maybe Jace has mistranslated something, but the demon prince is rising to its feet and Tenebra is hauling Jace to his, yanking him upright and naked and there are so many eyes on him, everyone can see—

“Until later, _kunnarnatar,”_ the prince croons, in English this time; its fingers stroke his cheek, its glittering claws nearly brushing Jace’s eye. “Be good for my servants. They will prepare your body for me.” It smiles, and it is like staring into the sun; blinding, burning, terrible. “You should let them. It will mean less pain for you.”

On that ominous note, it lets him go, and before Jace can react Tenebra plucks him off his feet, clasping him to its chest with all four of its arms, and seals its monstrous mouth over his.

Promise of pain or no, Jace can’t submit to this, not even with his thighs and cunt still wet with a demon’s spit; he screams and writhes, kicking, thrashing in the spider-demon’s grip but it only holds him tighter, undeterred, and its breath is like acid, stinking like burning plastic and eating away at the edges of Jace’s vision. Jace has never heard of mundane knock-out gas, but within seconds his body hangs limp in the demon’s grasp, boneless, his head lolling and full of hot, smoky cotton.

Satisfied, Tenebra adjusts him like a doll to that it’s carrying him like a baby, cradled in its arms, and scuttles across the stone floor with him.

Jace is wholly unconscious before they leave the throne room.

*

They did not mean wedding rings.

When Jace wakes he is hanging suspended in the middle of a much smaller chamber, a foot or so above the ground. There is no pain, because he is not being dangled from the ceiling; bands of glowing black crystal around his ankles, waist, wrists and neck seem to be the source of his levitation, holding him up and gently supporting his weight. At some point while he was out he has been washed; his skin feels soft and fresh, tears and sweat and dust and grease all gone, all the grime gathered on his journey to the prince’s fortress vanished as if it had never been. His hair is clean and dry; it hangs around his face like silk. His nails have been neatly trimmed, and the sourness is gone from his mouth, his teeth smooth and unfurred by plaque.

If he was not naked and being pawed by demons, if he does not think of faceless hands cleaning his body while he was unconscious, he might even be comfortable.

On the table in front of him are hundreds and hundreds of gold rings. Some of them are so small they wouldn’t fit over his little finger; others are so large he could wear them as a belt. They are plain but surprisingly finely made, and Jace remembers that demons are the ancestors of the fae, realises that the Hidden People must have learned their metalwork from somewhere. It is a strangely uncomfortable thought.

The rings are for him.

Not all of them; some will not fit. But a Moloch demon is directing a team of servants or apprentices and they are measuring, fitting, sliding the bands of gold into place. It is stunning how small and vulnerable simply being naked can make someone feel, and Jace hovers in place with a lump of sick, cold dread in his stomach even though logic insists none of them would dare risk angering their prince by molesting him—and none of them do, they seem indifferent to his body even as they measure the length of his ears and the thickness of his clit and how wide his toes are, and find an applicable ring, and put it on him. They put rings on every joint of his fingers, and around his wrists above the crystal bands, and thicker bracelets around his forearms and biceps. They ring his toes and his ankles, his calves and thighs; a belt of shimmering rings is locked tightly around his hips, a single loop of gold fastened around his waist. A band goes around his forehead under his hair, almost like a crown. Three rings slide onto his clit, these ones lined with velvet that makes him moan despite himself; the softness against sensitive skin is incredible.

He doesn’t understand the purpose of this. Decoration? Is it only that the polished metal sets off his skin and hair so well? Is it the demonic equivalent of a jewelled collar for a pet?

The Moloch demon makes a gesture, and the crystal bands float Jace over to a padded table. He thinks about struggling, but he’s still woozy from Tenebra’s breath and then the cuffs lock him in place, and it’s too late to try.

They pry his mouth open, and hold it that way with tools not so different from those a dentist might use.

They put caps of gold on his teeth—not all of them, but his incisors and molars.

They put dots of gold the size of sequins on the cavums of his ears, and on his eyelids.

They pierce his tongue—his head clasped tight and still between two monstrous hands while another grasps his tongue for the needle, and Jace doesn’t scream but he weeps, more for the used, animal feeling it leaves in him than for the pain.

Last of all, they fasten a golden collar around his throat. He sees it before they put it on him, and it is beautiful beyond words—delicately etched and decorated, studded with amber and opals and topaz. It’s a work of art, and Jace starts to cry again as it closes around his neck, as they carefully solder it closed. It drives it home in a way even the prince’s tongue couldn’t; he’s not a person anymore, he’s a _thing_ , a pet, an animal, and he hates it and hates it and it almost breaks his mind in half, the knowledge that this is not a nightmare, it will never end, this is his life until he dies.

They _solder it closed_. Not locked. Soldered. Like something never meant to come off.

“It was forged with prince Sorath’s blood,” the Moloch demon tells him disdainfully. “You should be proud to bear it.”

Jace bites his aching tongue to quiet his sobs, but he can’t do anything about his tears. Sorath. So that’s the prince’s name.

_(His owner’s name, his rapist’s name, the name of his future children’s sire—)_

No one has asked Jace’s name yet. It doesn’t matter here. Here he is ‘it’, or sometimes ‘bitch-queen’. He is property, a living fleshlight for Sorath’s pleasure, a machine to bear the prince’s demonic spawn, and nothing else.

He wonders if it is possible he will forget his own name, before the end.

No. He’ll die before that. He has to. He has to die still remembering who he is, before his first pregnancy comes to term. Surely in all those months, he’ll find a way to make the only escape he can.

The weight of gold and blood around his throat drags at him like an anchor.

*

When the demons are done bedecking him, it is the turn of others. A demon with six arms and hands bristling with too many fingers enters the room with a cluster of assistants, and comes to pet and poke at Jace’s stomach while its minions set up its tools.

Jace sees needles. Lots and lots of needles.

He used to believe he was so strong, but he quails, now, from those needles. His tongue still throbs with pain from its piercing.

“A good _[subject-material-canvas]_ ,” the many-armed demon declares, “but these _[foul-unclean-blasphemous]_ things must go.” It jabs sharp nails at Jace’s Marks. “Those fools should have let us work first, but I suppose we can manage around the _[ringed puppet strings]_.”

It is not speaking English—there’s no need, not when it’s not speaking to him—and it takes Jace a moment to realise that somehow, he understands its speech without needing to translate it in his mind. The gold sequins in his ears, maybe: spelled to give him comprehension? He can imagine too many reasons why Sorath would want Jace able to understand and obey commands.

Then what the demon actually said hits him, and Jace goes cold.

He knew they would have to remove his runes at some point. An Infernal fetus can’t survive in a Marked body, and his only purpose, value, _use_ is as a breeder. Of course they are going to remove his Marks. They have no reason not to.

But he fought so hard for them. Was the first Nephilim omega in almost two hundred years to wear battle-runes. They’re the Angel’s gift, Raziel’s armour against the dark, his signature of approval on Jace’s body, his choices.

 _(But that’s not true, if Raziel had wanted Jace to fight he would have made Jace an alpha or a beta; Jace was supposed to_ birth _warriors not_ be _one, and he didn’t, he chose to hunt, and when Raziel offered him a second chance in Simon Jace refused that too, and now, now he’s here, Raziel realised Jace is useless and let him be taken_ here _)_

And it doesn’t matter, anyway, because he can’t stop it from happening, can’t do anything as the demons heat their knives and their needles and strip him barer than naked, carefully burning the Angel’s runes out of his skin one by one and he screams, arches against the table, glittering with gold and the room swiftly choked with the scent of his own burning flesh, his mind white and blind with agony and helplessness and hopelessness, Raziel I’m sorry, _I’m sorry_ —

“Shut _[it-animal-object]_ up,” the one with the arms snarls, wielding its array of needles like an artist’s tools, and as casually as picking up a cup of coffee one of the other demons shoves its fist between Jace’s open legs and into his cunt.

The pain turns to pleasure so fast Jace gets mental whiplash; his body jerks sharply, and his scream breaks into stunned silence as he loses his breath. It’s like being in the alleyway again, Simon’s fist spreading him open; the pressure squeezes his brain to nothing and his cunt is full of fire, molten flames that lick and sear beneath his skin, every nerve in his body singing with dumb, mindless ecstasy. His cunt contracts around the false knot, sucking at it, trying to pull it deeper, encourage it to get bigger; distantly he is vaguely aware that there is something wrong, that this is humiliating and shameful, that a demon’s fist in his cunt should not make him purr and plead for more, but it means very little, there is no room in him for anything but the overwhelming pleasure. He moans and mewls and squirms his hips, blissed out and revelling in being so full, so fucked; his clit throbs for attention, its swelling flesh caressed by the velvet lining of its rings, but no matter how pleadingly he whimpers the demons won’t pet him.

“Hold _[it-animal-object]_ down,” the one in charge orders, “I can’t tattoo the _[sigil-name-crest]_ if the slut keeps wriggling.”

Someone pins his hips flat to the table, and the work continues, and Jace doesn’t even notice. The stretch of his cunt floods his system with a cocktail of hormones that dull the pain to nothing, that magnify the fist inside him to everything, and he moans with helpless lust when their restraints keep him for trying to get more.

He is collared and decked in gold, their prince’s whore, and he spends the hours trying to fuck himself on a demon’s fist as they burn away his Marks.

*

When the hand eventually pulls free of his clinging, sucking cunt, Jace’s runes are gone, reduced to white, shiny scars, and it takes Jace long minutes before he can do more than shake. His mind comes back but his sex is still throbbing sweetly, aching and desperate, and the pleasure twists into the pain of his burned-away Marks like sugar mixed with cyanide.

The sick, _sick_ shame is bitter wormwood, and tears leak from his eyes as he shuts them tight. He wants to draw his legs up, curl in on himself and hide his pulsing cunt, his hard, throbbing clit, from the demons’ indifferent attention, but the crystal bands still hold him pinned like a butterfly to a board. There’s nothing he can do but cry, and he tries not to, but it’s hard.

Gradually he becomes aware of another sensation, a different throbbing, not inside him but on him. His lower abdomen burns and aches fiercely, and when he looks down at himself he can see a twisting ebony symbol tattooed right over his womb, and the room is warm but he feels so cold and sick, looking at it. He can’t read it, it’s obviously not an Angel’s Mark, but he guesses that it’s a name, he guesses it says _Sorath’s_ or something like it, and he’s already collared, he already knew what he is here, but to have it branded into his _skin_ —

The demon with all the arms sees him looking at it. “That’s to keep your womb sealed tight,” it tells him, washing its tools and putting them away in neat black cases. “Sammael knows, you can’t trust a _kunnarnatar_ to keep its legs shut, and even if you chain them to the _[nest-cage-breeding bed]_ there’s always some suicidal idiot who’ll try and sneak a taste of bitch-queen cunt when the _[prince-lord-heart of the hive]_ isn’t looking.” It nods at the Infernal Mark. “Well, they can mount you all they like; your womb knows who it belongs to now. Won’t open for anyone but the prince Sorath. Can’t have anyone else planting a clutch in you, now can we?”

Jace stares at the demon, too appalled to speak even if it had any interest in what he might say. _‘Your womb knows who it belongs to now’_ : he wants to scream and cry and deny it, but he’s too lost in the horror of the implications. _‘They can mount you all they like’_ ; is that rhetoric, or a prediction? Will Sorath let other demons use him too, now they can’t knock him up? Is he to be a toy of the _court_ , not just its prince? The image the tattooist painted plays over and over in his head, Jace chained to Sorath’s bed and helpless as other demons make use of his cunt—sneaking and frantic in their stolen pleasure, if they have him without permission, or languid and savouring in their prince’s generosity, if Sorath lets them share in the court’s treasure.

What about when he’s pregnant? They won’t—they can’t—they’d be too afraid of injuring the litter to let a revolving door of demon cocks at him then, won’t they? _Won’t they?_

Jace squeezes his eyes shut. No. No, it was rhetoric, the tattooist didn’t mean it literally; he has Sorath’s blood in the collar around his neck and the prince’s name branded over his womb, there’s no way the demon prince is going to share. It tongue-fucked Jace in front of its subjects so they would know who he belongs to, so they would know to keep their claws off him. It’s just rhetoric.

There’s something so terribly, horribly wrong with the fact that for a moment, the thought of only having to be fucked by Sorath is reassuring.

*

They force more healing potion down his throat, the same disgusting stuff his captors used on him in the cage. As before, it knocks him unconscious, and when he wakes neither his burned-off Marks nor the piercing in his tongue still hurts him.

His clit has gone soft, but the rings around his organ haven’t become loose or slid off entirely. They must tighten or loosen as appropriate.

When he wakes up, Tenebra has returned. It is congratulating the ones who worked on him, who ringed and bedecked and unMarked him, and then gave him one last Mark to replace all the rest. Apparently, they did good work.

Jace doesn’t have it in him to be glad.

They remove the black crystal bands from his body, and then Tenebra beckons Jace. “Follow me, little _[bitch-jewel-breeder of hive-hearts]_.”

He does. He doesn’t know what else to do. The knives and needles have been put away, vanished; he can’t snatch one up and cut his throat. There’s nowhere to run to. He can’t even cry anymore; his body feels scraped hollow, wrung out with exhaustion. He wants to lie down on the stone floor and sleep some more, sleep and never wake up, but his mind flinches away from imagining the punishment it would earn him.

He just. He doesn’t want to be hurt anymore. And he knows that won’t happen, that there’s nothing he can do to keep them from hurting him—but at the same time he can’t bring any more pain upon himself. Not deliberately, consciously. He can’t _choose_ it.

So Tenebra tells him to walk, and he walks. He keeps his eyes on the floor and his mouth shut, and if shame shivers over him to be naked and ringed like a trophy pet, like a pedigree bitch, he just—there’s nothing he can do. He feels sick and small and already broken whenever they pass anyone in the labyrinthine corridors, whenever he feels eyes on him, but what is he supposed to do? His tear ducts burn, empty, run dry, and no one cares if he weeps, anyway. No one cares what he thinks, or what he wants. He’s not here to _want_ , unless it amuses Sorath to make him beg, make him come on a demon’s tongue or fingers or cock. And it might.

Jace’s thoughts run in numb, rusted circles, creaking and slow. There’s no end in sight. He didn’t manage to kill himself before his captors brought him here, and now—now there will probably be no chance to die before Sorath has him for real. He tries to resign himself to that, to accept it—the demon prince is going to rape him, there’s nothing he can do to prevent it, it’s going to fuck him full and knock him up—but that is too much for his numbness to contain. Horrified despair spikes, tearing through his dulled, dumb calm, and for a few minutes he has to fight to breathe, trying not to hyperventilate.

He can’t panic. He _can’t_ panic. He has to either get himself killed during the—the act, or find some way to commit suicide after, later, before the birth. That is his only purpose now. He has to hold to that. They’ve taken his runes but if he can save the world from the monsters they want to get on him, then he’s still a Shadowhunter. Maybe—maybe he can even earn Raziel’s forgiveness, if he can die with honour. If he can die defending the mundane world from darkness, the way a Shadowhunter should.

Maybe.

He clings to it. He has nothing else to hope for.

*

Tenebra brings him to a chamber that looks like a hastily convened kitchen. A host of Iblis demons are tending a huge, crudely-carved stone cauldron over a pit of green flames; around them are scattered knives and pots and bits of unidentifiable meat, things that might be roots and dry, withered plants. Jace sees a frying pan that must have been taken from a human kitchen, and a blade that is knapped flint, and doesn’t understand the juxtaposition until, with reverent care, one of the demons scoops some of the gruel in the cauldron into a golden bowl, and brings it to Tenebra.

Who gives it to Jace.

“ _[You-object]_ must eat,” the spider-demon orders, when Jace stares dumbly at the bowl in his hands. “You will not sicken on my watch, little bitch. You will _eat.”_

This is for him, Jace realises. They’ve assembled this parody of a human kitchen because the prince’s _kunnarnatar_ is human, and can’t murder his own food, but still must be fed. He can’t live on raw demon meat.

_(Can he?)_

They’re trying to _take care_ of him.

He almost throws up into the bowl.

But he doesn’t.

He eats it. Sits down in a corner and tries to ignore how they watch him, the smoke-formed Iblises, Tenebra with its hard garnet gaze, and scoops the thick stew-like stuff into his mouth with his fingers. It makes him feel like an animal, naked and watched and mannerless, crude and dirty, and his face burns but he doesn’t want to be force-fed again. He remembers too well how that went, when he was still in his cage. The slop is foul, and he tries not to think about what’s in it, where the chunks of meat came from or what kind of vegetables grow in Hell, what effect they might have on a Nephilim’s physiology. As wrong as it seems, eating the demon meat before doesn’t seem to have made him sick, but every mouthful sits in his stomach like a dull, cold acid.

It’s probably too much to hope for that they would accidentally poison him. He’s too valuable for them to give him anything but what they know for sure he can eat.

 _(And how do they know? Is he this prince’s first_ kunnarnatar _, or have there been others? Have other Nephilim omegas worn these rings, eaten from this bowl?_ _Will be he the first to bear Sorath’s young, or only the latest in a chain of horror?)_

He scrapes the bowl clean with his fingers, and for lack of anything to wipe them on licks his fingers after, ashamed of himself but with no other option if he wants to be clean.

“Are you still hungry?” Tenebra asks when he’s done.

He wasn’t hungry to start with. Jace shakes his head, and hands the spider-demon the bowl when it reaches for it.

Tenebra takes him then to another room, this one all cool, slick stone curved around a central pool of still, dark water, and bids him wash himself. The water is cold, but Jace’s skin is smeared with fear-sweat and pain-sweat, and his thighs are still a little sticky from being fisted earlier. He doesn’t protest. There is no soap, but Tenebra impatiently shows him how to get a lather from the strange roots in a bowl at the edge of the pool, and he does his best not to care about being watched. It makes no sense to feel more violated now, with the cold water on his skin and plastering his hair to his skull, trying to use his fingers to rub his thighs clean; he’s just as naked as he was in the corridor, in the kitchen, following the spider-demon around like a meek puppy. He’s just as vulnerable. It shouldn’t feel worse.

And yet. Tenebra watches, and Jace feels shaken and raw inside, sick and scared in a way that’s become all too familiar, if not yet normal.

_(Please don’t let him be here long enough for it to become normal.)_

He feels like a piece of meat beneath that gaze.

The world in which he’s a Shadowhunter, the world with Alec and Izzy and his family in it—the world where Jace is a _person_ —it seems so far away. Like a dream. He dunks himself in the icy water, and part of him can’t quite believe in his old life like he believes in the cold, the wet, the dark. Tenebra.

Sorath.

When Jace crawls out of the pool, shivering, the spider-demon tosses something at him. The room is dim, only faintly lit with the glowing fungus that grows sporadically around the fortress-caverns, but Jace has a Shadowhunter’s eyes, he sees the object clearly enough that the bottom of his stomach drops out as it clatters near his hands, and his cold-tightened cunt clenches tighter still in instinctive protest.

“Prepare yourself,” Tenebra says, as Jace stares at what is unmistakably a dildo and trembles with something that reaches deeper than the cold.

Prepare himself. For…? But he knows what for. He knew when Tenebra ordered him to wash, because why else would they want him cleaned? For what other purpose? Drops of the chilly water drip like diamond beads from the gold ringing Jace’s body and inside himself he quails, shrinks from Tenebra’s meaning. The object—he can’t call it a toy, even inside his head—is carved of dark stone, a smooth, featureless rod, and he stares at it and stares at it, wondering if it is a realistic replica, if this is what was hidden beneath the prince’s skirt, if this is what waits for him—

The hard clicking of Tenebra’s talons moving rapidly over the stone floor jerks Jace’s attention up, but not fast enough: the spider-demon has a fist in Jace’s hair and yanks him to his knees before his cold-fuddled, horror-struck body can react, and he whimpers at the pain and cringes as Tenebra shakes him roughly.

“You will do this thing,” it hisses, “or I will do it for you. Do you understand, little bitch-queen?”

“I can’t!” Jace gasps, terrified, flinching away from the glowing rage in Tenebra’s eyes, and the words are like chunks of basalt in his throat, too big and too rough and tearing at the fragile softness of his throat as they heave themselves out, but that doesn’t make what he has to say any less true— “I can’t, I’m sorry, it won’t go in dry!”

“Then you had better get yourself wet,” Tenebra snarls, its pincers snapping in counterpoint to its rage, “or I will _[force-make]_ you _[open-wide-unvirgin]_. Would you see the tool _I_ shall use?”

It forces his head down, and he’s too scared to struggle, his heart a frenzied magpie in his throat as he’s pushed beneath the demon’s ‘waist’, under its spider-body. At first he sees nothing, can only feel the tearing pain of Tenebra’s grip on his hair—but then in the dimness he sees some of the shadows beneath the demon stir, and move, and when he understands what he’s looking at he tries to jerk away, whimpering again, his blood turned to ice in his veins.

From a dark slit in the demon’s underbelly, a darker thing extends, fleshy and thick and as long as Jace’s forearm. It emerges slowly, heavily, so that inch by inch Jace sees it grow swollen and flushed, extending towards him like a monstrous tongue, eager for a taste of Nephilim omega. Small, wiry spines inflate along its length, sharp but soft, elastic, and when they quiver beneath his attention Jace’s stomach roils, imagining what they would feel like inside him, stroking his inner walls like a thousand gentle needles with every thrust—

 _(It’s the first he’s ever seen, the first penis-phallus-_ cock _, and it’s a_ monster’s _, and suddenly it hits him that he’ll never see a human one, not ever)_

He sobs with misery and with terror, shaking with it, and Tenebra hisses. “You see,” it says. “Make your choice, little bitch. You will open yourself, or I will break you open for my master.” In a sudden sharp movement, it uses two of its legs to scoop him up off the floor and pull him up and into its underbelly; Jace yelps, the sound nearly a scream as suddenly he’s held tight against Tenebra’s body, held clasped tight by not two but four armoured legs, the loss of which affect the demon’s balance not at all. It _hitches_ him down, and Jace screams for real, horror and panic white lights in his head as the thick head of Tenebra’s cock meets his vulnerable cunt. His thighs are held spread wide by the demon’s claws and he can do nothing, _nothing_ as its cock rubs lingeringly against his sex, toying with him, revelling in his terror and disgust and the sobs wracking his body, inadvertently shivering him against the slick tip.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, please, please don’t, I’ll be good, I’m s-sorry—!” Jace sobs, and Tenebra makes a sound like a jagged-edged purr and rocks his body against its cock, teasing, torturing, catching the lips of his cunt on the head of its length and _pressing_ —

 _“No!”_ Jace struggles, uselessly, helplessly, and Tenebra laughs, a vicious, sibilant sound—and stops pulling Jace against its cock. It just _holds_ him there, his cunt pressed hard against the monstrous head, his lips beginning to stretch, legs spread like a whore’s and the elastic tension between his legs, just one hard shudder, one disgusted jerk and he’ll impale himself on the spider-demon’s cock—

He holds himself still, trembling like a leaf shredded by a storm, tears streaming down his cheeks like rain, and Tenebra purrs again. One of its legs caresses his back, and Jace has to fight not to shake, not to accidentally slip the lips of his cunt over the hot, throbbing tip pressed against him.

“Should I need to,” the demon tells him, “I will open you and hold you open. I will tie you beneath my belly while you hang from my phallus, and for a day and a night I will hold you tight to me, while you shudder through the pain and convulse through the pleasure. You will beg for release from both, and I will not give it to you, and when I present you to my master you will crawl into neir lap with your sex flowing like Gihon, and ney will be pleased.” It tugs him forward, just a little, just enough to nudge the lips of his sex aside— “For that, ney would wait a little longer to seed a royal clutch in you.”

Jace shakes his head desperately, though Tenebra can’t see him; he is beneath the demon’s body, out of view of its many eyes. “Please,” he sobs, “please don’t, _please_ , I’ll do what you want, just, _please—”_

“Very well.” And the demon drops him; its legs release him and Jace falls hard onto the floor, still crying, bleeding tears as if his soul’s been wounded; he doesn’t know how to stop. “Then do as I told you, before I lose my patience!”

Jace scrambles desperately to obey. His vision is blurred by his tears but he finds the dildo with shaking hands, and he doesn’t know how to do this, without lube or alpha pheromones to slick the way. He’s never felt more dry, not even in all the years he suppressed his sexuality with the _reprima_ rune, but he lies on his back and gets the dildo between his legs anyway because he’d rather rape himself with a stone member than be forced onto Tenebra’s. It’s too easy to imagine, to predict; the harness spun out of a spider’s webbing, holding him hanging beneath the demon’s belly, impaled on its cock, with just enough give in the bindings that he rocks and slides over its spined length like a toy of flesh whenever Tenebra moves—

No, he can’t, he _can’t_ , he can’t face that, and his cunt burns as he pushes the smooth stone cock against his entrance but he has no choice, no choice at all.

It hurts. It _hurts_ , and he closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Tenebra watching him fuck himself open for its master, but he knows the demon is there, can feel its red gaze like a physical weight on his skin, a smear of foul oil, and his cunt burns as it stretches unhappily, unwillingly, with no give at all.

Tenebra will take him to the prince when he’s done, bring him to Sorath’s bed like a pimp bringing a whore, and Jace shakes, and can’t get it in, can’t open for it when he knows, knows that once he’s prepped he’ll—they’ll—

His muscles lock like frozen leather, but he makes himself stop pushing and put the dildo down. His hands are shaking so hard that it clatters against the floor.

Tenebra hisses, and starts to move toward him, but Jace ducks down. “Wait!” he gasps, begs. “Wait, I’m sorry, I can—I have to use my fingers first. It’s too big.”

“Then get to it, _kunnarnatar,”_ the demon growls, clearly impatient, and Jace swallows hard, and nods as his eyes burn.

There are no words to describe how it feels, sucking his fingers wet enough to fuck himself while a demon watches. Shame is too small, too weak a concept to encompass the full scale of how sick and dirty it feels to spread his legs in full view of Tenebra, the stone floor pressing into his back as his spit-slicked finger probes tentatively at his cunt. The act—the act is nothing he hasn’t done before in the privacy of his room; he’s fucked himself raw a hundred times since Simon came to live at the Institute.

But he’s not in his room, he’s in a demon hive below the ground with rings around his clit and a piercing in his tongue, and he’ll never see his room again, and even when he closes his eyes again he can’t unsee Tenebra’s ember-red eyes, watching the juncture of his thighs not with desire but with callous boredom, and somehow that’s even _worse_. He feels like an animal, a thing, and the lump in his throat is hot and sore as he breaches himself with a fingertip.

It hurts, but not nearly as badly as the dildo—Jace swallows around the ache in his throat and pushes deeper, trying to be gentle with himself but terrified of what could happen if Tenebra decides he’s not moving quickly enough. He’s never tried to do this when he wasn’t already soaking wet; it _drags_ , his flesh clinging unhappily to the length of his finger, and it stings, it burns, he hates himself and wants to cry and doesn’t dare stop.

 _Please, please get wet,_ he begs, tense and tight and trembling inside as he forces his finger in. If he doesn’t—he can’t face what Tenebra will do to him, he _can’t_ , the thought alone is more than he can bear—

It hurts something deeper and more fragile than his body, but his mind sieves desperately through his memories, looking for something that might help him get turned on _(even here, even now)_ , and it’s Simon, his thoughts find Simon automatically. It’s all he has, for all practical intents and purposes Jace has been asexual all his life, neutered first by childhood and then after he presented by the _reprima_ Mark; Simon’s the only thing to have ever made him wet. His thoughts have nowhere else to turn.

He calls up Simon’s scent, and it scores his soul like a knife but the memory of it lights the faintest, smallest spark of heat in the pit of his belly, a tiny tug of warmth, and he wants to throw up, he hates himself _so much_ but he clings to it like a lifeline, fans the miniscule flame with everything he has. If he doesn’t, if he can’t prep himself—no, don’t think about that. Think about Simon.

If Simon were here… If Simon were here, Tenebra would be the one terrified, paralysed by Simon’s strong, sweet scent, by the black rage in his eyes. Jace thinks of how Simon executed the Vetis demon at the club, how his pheromones spread around him like an angel’s wings, and imagining his alpha’s fury if he saw how Jace was being treated now makes him shiver, real and unfeigned. For doing this to Jace, for threatening Jace with its needle-lined cock, Simon would _slaughter_ the spider-demon, cut it to bloody pieces with his starlight-swords, and Jace’s cunt ripples around his finger, warmed by the thought, the picture of possessive alpha strength his imagination presents to him. The scent of him, the way he would look at Jace over Tenebra’s remains, dark-eyed and not even out of breath from the effort…

Jace licks his lip. The piercing snags on his teeth, and for a moment the fantasy stutters, stumbles, but he grabs at it desperately with both hands.

Simon… Maybe this time his alpha would take more than a kiss for Jace’s rescue. Maybe the rage and the spilled blood and the protective instinct would push him over into rut, and he would fall on Jace like a tiger, like a starving wolf. Jace has never smelled an alpha’s rut but it’s supposed to be incredible, a _drop-and-spread-’em_ scent, and he extrapolates from the smell of Simon’s lust; imagines it enfolding him, drowning him, while Simon rips the gold rings from Jace’s body and his knot swells against Jace’s thigh…

His cunt is warm now, silky and stretching for his finger as he slides it in and out; gently, slowly, thinking of Simon’s hands on his body, touching him everywhere, reclaiming him from Hell, from Sorath, painting Jace in his pheromones, and Jace would be soaking for him, sweet and open like a good omega, like an omega Simon might _keep_ … He pushes a second finger inside himself, and it feels good now, shivery-good; his clit is hardening and even the caress of the velvet-lined rings on it doesn’t threaten his fantasy, just feels good. Simon would finger him, wouldn’t he—not gently, not if he’d gone into rut, a little rough and thrusting hard and without thinking Jace slides a third finger inside, mimicking the Simon in his head, fucking himself like Simon would, ungentle and possessive, not asking but _taking_ because of course Jace belongs to him, of course he does, he was born to be Simon’s— It stings a little, the third finger, but he’s so wet now, welcoming his alpha like a good slut should, and Jace tips his hips up, panting, _aching_ for Simon to line him up and fuck him, oh Raziel, the hard fist of Simon’s knot as it pushes inside him…

His free hand reaches for his clit—

And Tenebra hisses, shattering it, shattering everything; Jace jerks with horrible surprise, coming back to himself with an icy jolt.

“None of that,” the demon says, and when Jace understands he whips his hand away from his clit, his chest tight with fear and dread. “Your pleasure belongs to my master now, little bitch.” It gestures to the dildo with one of its hands. “Use your toy, but do not think to steal an orgasm without the prince’s permission. You will not like your punishment, if you try it.”

Jace’s eyes glance down into the shadows beneath Tenebra’s spider-body. Its horrible member is still thick and full against its belly, and Jace’s stomach twists, heaves at the thought that his slutty, whorish display was arousing for the spider-demon. It’s not fair, he did only what he had to do, but thinking of how into the fantasy he got—the slick heat between his thighs, his fingers even now still buried in it, fucking himself at a demon’s command and _liking_ it—it’s hard not to cry with humiliation, with shame, self-loathing biting at his heart like a bear-trap.

His cunt, indifferent to his degradation, _throbs_.

“You understand,” Tenebra says, seeing where his eyes go. It sounds almost satisfied, smug, pleased by his fear. Jace is half-sure he sees its monstrous phallus twitch beneath his gaze. “Now, the toy.”

Frozen, unable to look away _(unable to breathe)_ , Jace reaches for and finds the dildo. All thoughts of Simon are gone now, but his cunt is still wet, still aches like a siren-song between his thighs. He fumbles the cold stone as he brings it to his sex, the smooth round head pressing in against his knuckles. He’s shaking, and his body might be hot but his mind is cold, iced with fear and shame as he withdraws his slick fingers and lines up the dildo, and all he can see is Tenebra’s cock, hard and heavy and dark, all he can think of is how those spines will feel raping him if he doesn’t get this right—

Tenebra makes that rough purring noise again as Jace pushes, as the round head of the toy breaches him, stretches him, forces him open and Jace sobs, horrified by the demon’s pleasure, by his _own_ ; the dildo is hard and unyielding and nothing like flesh, thick and cold, but it fills him, his cunt clasps tight around it helplessly, instinctively, satisfied by anything that drives away the emptiness. The stretch burns, the rod thicker than his fingers, but he forces it deeper, his legs wide open, on full display for Tenebra’s burning eyes. It’s more than he’s ever taken, more and worse than the toy he bought for himself in New York—that was soft, and thinner than this, but this is stone and so wide and he’s still wet, wet as he stares at the spider-demon’s cock and shudders, gulping back tears—

“Good little bitch,” Tenebra purrs, and Jace can’t hold it anymore; he sobs again as he draws the toy out, thrusts it back in, a little deeper this time— “ _Kunnarnatar_ slut—look at you, raping yourself while you stare at my phallus. Do you regret your choice, little bitch? Would you rather I opened you after all? It can be done. You need only set aside your toy, and I will have mercy on your need…”

 _“No!”_ Jace gasps, “no, please!” He thrusts the dildo harder inside him, hard enough to tear an involuntary whimper from his throat but he doesn’t stop, desperate to be good, to please, to convince the spider-demon that nothing more than the toy is necessary—

Tenebra makes a sound a little like a chainsaw, and Jace realises the demon is laughing. “No?” it asks. “And they say that _kunnarnatarin_ long for any member. But perhaps, having tasted of our prince, you want none other. I commend your acumen.”

Jace shakes his head, but he doesn’t stop fucking himself, stuffing his cunt full of the hard smoothness over and over. It does feel good, gradually, the pure physical sensation warming his cunt as he thrusts and Tenebra watches and Jace’s slutty omega clit fully hardens within its golden bindings and he cries, hating himself, disgusted and terrified and he can’t get the picture out of his head, Tenebra clasping him tight, sheathing its needle-lined cock inside his wet, dripping cunt…

“Enough,” Tenebra says, after an endless while of thrusting stone and searing tears, horror twisting him sick and his cunt squelching for the fullness. “That is enough. Come. Get up.”

Jace pulls out the dildo and lets it fall on the ground. He gets up and tries not to think about the slick dripping down his thighs, the ugly, flushed heat spreading over his chest and face. He can smell himself, omega desire cut through with misery, but either demons can’t smell emotions or the misery doesn’t smell bad to them, because Tenebra doesn’t order him back into the pool.

It holds its hand out instead, and Jace stares at the demon’s palm for a long moment before he understands, picks up the slick dildo and hands it to Tenebra, humiliated beyond words, so ashamed of himself he’s distantly amazed he doesn’t just die of it.

The spider-demon smiles grotesquely, and closes its mouth around the toy.

Jace _burns_ , shock and despair and yet more humiliation closing over his head like a tidal wave. He can’t do anything but stare as the demon sucks his slick off the stone like it’s been given a treat, all eight of its eyes on his as they spill helpless, pathetic tears. He knows it’s his reaction it’s after, but he can’t help it; his cunt throbs and _wants_ and he just wants to die and it’s so unutterably dehumanising, shameful and dirty, Tenebra sucking the slick it forced him to make off the toy it raped him with, rape by proxy—

The demon pulls the toy free with a slick, messy pop, and smiles again. “Delicious. I will have to petition my master to let me _[taste-drink-consume]_ from the source some time.” And snaps its pincers, playfully.

Jace just…stares. Not Tenebra. Not that mouth, pressed against his cunt with its shark-teeth and its pincers, all of its horror devouring his softness. No. No.

It laughs again as he starts to shake, and tosses the dildo on the floor. Jace flinches, at the sudden movement and the expected noise—but the dildo doesn’t crash against the stone ground. At the last moment it catches itself, and floats gently down. The base locks into a dip in the uneven floor, so the whole stands upright on its own without support, and Jace doesn’t know whether to be relieved or cry because it’s not over, he thought Tenebra would take him to the prince’s bed now but it’s not over—and at the same time he feels a sob catch in his chest like a silver hook because _it’s not over_ , they’re not done here yet, he thought they were _done_ —

“Now you will practise the _[proper-seemly-becoming]_ way to _[present-submit-offer-yourself]_ to one such as our master,” the spider-demon says, and its face is no human face but Jace can still read the satisfaction in it, the cruel pleasure that flays him open with helpless despair. Tenebra is _enjoying_ this _(of course it is)_. “I will not have you shaming me before the prince, little bitch-queen. You will be perfect when I take you to nem. Now show me how you kneel.”

It’s hard. It’s so hard. Jace is still shaking, his very bones vibrating with fear and shame and shattered pride, and for a long moment he can’t make himself move at all, his joints locked like rusted bolts. But he can smell the stink of himself, slutty omega begging to get bred, and the spider-demon’s arousal is still hard and ugly beneath its belly, and it’s not even defiance that makes it hard to go down but it will look like defiance, it will look like defiance and Tenebra will punish him for it, rake his insides with the spines on its cock until he screams and begs forgiveness—so he kneels. Trembling, clumsy and inelegant with exhaustion and the endless dread, he sinks to his knees on the cold floor before Tenebra, and tries not to see the horrible twist of its pleased smirk.

It crumples him up inside, like paper, like trash.

_(Soon there’ll be nothing left of him.)_

“As I thought,” the spider-demon says. “Pathetic. You know _nothing.”_ It takes a pointed step forward, and Jace flinches, his heart turned to sun-struck ice in his chest, cold and blazing white with instinctive, reactive terror. “This is your master you will greet! The one whose collar you wear, whose name is emblazoned upon your womb! Ney _owns_ you, little bitch; your body, your mind, your pleasure and your pain! When you are brought into neir presence, you will kneel _gracefully_ —spine straight, head bowed, hands behind your back. You will spread your knees wide, so all present can smell what you are and to whom you belong. And you will always, _always_ greet your lord and master wet and welcoming.”

The words hail down like blows, and Jace hunches under them, cold and alone and blinking back helpless, devastated tears. It just. It never stops. Every time he thinks it can get no worse it _does_ , and he keeps willing himself to just die but his breath keeps on coming, scoring his throat and lungs like shrapnel, like shards.

This is his life, this is his _life_ , these instructions are supposed to apply to every day of his future and Tenebra says a word that means _master_ but the translation spell spills levels and levels of meaning into Jace, _master_ and _king_ and _alpha, mate_ and _god_ , someone—something—that owns the blood in his veins and the slick between his legs, his tears and his thoughts, his life and his death. It’s a word that means the one who owns the rights to his womb, the sire of any children he might have, will have; it means knife, dagger, in the sense that Jace is a sheath, _the_ sheath, made for this one blade, and tears are streaming down his cheeks, he’s crying because it’s not true, it can’t be, but they think he is and they’ll _make_ him that and he can’t stop them, there’s nothing he can do to stop them—

“The _[prince/lord/leader of the pack/court/hive-the one who is obeyed]_ is merciful,” Tenebra says, watching his tears but saying nothing, offering no comfort, why would it? Jace already knows they think his tears are pretty, and that’s as good a reason as any to deny them the sight of him crying but he’s too shattered to _stop_. “Ney understands that you have much to learn. You will always be granted time to prepare yourself for neir presence, until your hole is trained to soak at neir approach, at the thought of neir touch. This will come in time. Until then, you will ensure you are properly welcoming through your own efforts. Do you understand?”

Jace shakes his head desperately.

_(He does, he does but he doesn’t **want** to understand, he doesn’t want to be right—)_

If Tenebra knows or guesses that Jace lies, it doesn’t call him on it. It is enjoying itself, enjoying Jace’s misery, his terror, the violation after violation. He can see it in the sharp edges of its terrible mouth. “When you are summoned to the prince’s presence,” it says, “or told that ney will come to you, you will stimulate your hole until it is wet. You will not bring yourself to orgasm without permission. When you are brought before your master, you will kneel with legs wide apart, presenting neir sheath to nem; when you are honoured by neirs coming to you, you will lie on your back, knees up and legs open. This is how a good _kunnarnatar_ greets their master. It is how _you_ will greet nem, from now on.”

 _Neir sheath_. Because that’s all he his; the prince’s sheath, a hole for the demon’s pleasure, a womb to seed—

He can’t imagine always being wet for Sorath. He can’t. He can’t do that. How can he do that? _You will stimulate your hole_ —

His stomach churns, sick beyond words.

“Eventually, you will require no preparation time,” Tenebra says casually, but when Jace looks up in horror its eyes glint and burn, fully aware of what it is saying. “The mere thought of neir approach will warm you. But for now, you will practise your greeting.”

Jace stares. He doesn’t understand. For real, this time.

Tenebra smiles, awfully, pincers clacking. “You will rise,” it orders, instructs, “and kneel again, according to the proper form this time.”

Spine straight, head bowed… Numbly, Jace gets to his feet again. The rings are not cold against his skin, despite the temperature of the room; they are as warm as his body, horribly easy to forget, to ignore, until the gold glints in the shadowy light of the glowing mushrooms. Gilded chains.

When he starts to kneel a second time, Tenebra snaps, “Not _there_ , bitch-queen. Step forward and kneel.”

Jace glances down, prepared to place his feet, and—can’t. He _can’t_ , the stone dildo is right there, if he—if he kneels there, it will—he will—

He looks up at Tenebra helplessly, hopelessly imploring. It can’t mean—it _can’t_ —

But it is smiling, its four arms folded across its featureless chest. “You will kneel,” it says softly. “And you will lower yourself upon your toy in the doing. This is the form, _kunnarnatar_. You will _always_ kneel as if you lower yourself upon your master’s _[generating organ]_. Before much longer, you will do just that, and this exercise will teach you how. Now.” It leans its upper body forward. _“Kneel_ , bitch-queen. Kneel as if for your master.”

_(Or else.)_

Jace looks down at the dildo: solid, cold, unyielding. Sticking straight up, as if eager to return to Jace’s cunt again.

_(He wants to die.)_

He steps forward. He is shaking; he is not sure if he ever stopped. His cunt still aches, some; faintly, distantly. He is numb. He is cold. He is crying, silently, as he bows his head away from Tenebra’s eyes and spreads his feet, his legs, on either side of the dark toy.

He holds his wrists behind his back, and beneath Tenebra’s hot, hungry gaze he lowers himself down, trembling, careful. More gracefully than the last time. When the smooth head of the dildo meets his cunt he sobs, once; and then gravity and stone conspire together against him, his own weight pulling him down, stretching his sex around the toy’s cruel hardness inch by tense, awful inch. He struggles to impale himself gently but he is so tired, he is gasping, hitching, sobbing breaths and Tenebra is purring again and Jace is crying as it fills him, as his knees meet the ground the toy is buried two-thirds of its length inside Jace’s hot, whorish cunt, and it is worse, it is always worse, the dildo is wet with Tenebra’s spit, still warm from the demon’s mouth as it nestles into Jace like it belongs there—

“Good bitch,” Tenebra purrs, and Jace doesn’t even look up, can’t make himself look up, his shoulders shaking with his tears. “Now raise yourself up, _kunnarnatar_ , and down again. You will be in your master’s presence soon; you must make your hole a place of welcome for nem. Up, _kunnarnatar_ , and down again…”

Sobbing, Jace obeys. It is too much, it is everything, he cries and doesn’t dare to resist and his hips slide up, slide down, struggling with his balance but not enough to stop, up and down, up and down, the hard stone stroking in and out of his cunt like a piston, like an actual toy, and Jace feels so used and small and dirty, a broken thing, a shameful thing. By the Angel, he’s no Shadowhunter—no Shadowhunter would do this, would ever do this, if the Lightwoods could see him now what would they think of him, omega slut fucking himself on a demon’s orders, making his cunt warm and wet for a demon prince, making it _welcoming_ —

“Just like that, good _kunnarnatar,”_ Tenebra purrs and Jace is sobbing, shaking, his thighs straining as he fucks himself, over and over and over, grinding the heat that still lingers in his cunt from before into evil flames. Slick starts to trickle from his cunt down the toy, more with every thrust. “Rape yourself upon the stone for your master. Think of nem, little bitch, think of neir pleasure to find your hole silken and warm for nem. Such a lovely sheath for neir glory. Does your body hunger for nem yet? It will. It will learn its purpose faster than your mind, you will see. That is always the way.”

Jace shakes his head desperately, but he remembers how quickly he came apart for Sorath’s tongue, how it felt licking him open, tasting the inside of his womb, and the memory slides between his legs with the stone, fucking him, filling him, hard and solid and immutable, undeniable. His thighs are spread wide and Tenebra’s words worm into his head, pour their poison through his ears and every time he lowers himself down it feels a little better, his soul is screaming but his cunt is purring, soaking, doesn’t care about what’s coming so long as it can be _full_ —

“You are dripping again, _kunnarnatar_. That is good, you are learning already. You will do this each time you are summoned, whenever the prince comes to your _[nesting-place]._ You will teach your body to burn for nem. It will catch fire quickly. You are _kunnarnatar,_ this is what you were made for, born for; to sheathe princes and breed them, birth them. It is a cruel joke of your Raziel’s that you were born to those who hid you from us, but you are home now. We will treasure you, and you will breed stars like pearls in your womb for our master—”

_(Radioactive stars, stars that will burn green and black and sear the earth with their un-light—)_

Jace’s hips are rising and falling but his head is shaking, _no_ , please no, it’s not true, it’s _not_ , his cunt is making slick, wet sounds with every rocking thrust but it’s just the friction, it’s not, _he’s_ not—

_(There are no alphas here, there are no pheromones to make him weak and wet and come undone, there is only the stone cock and the demon watching him and his clit throbbing against the rings clasped around it, flushed and hard, and they used to say Hell was the absence of God and he has to hope that’s true, because if Raziel can see him now—)_

He is, though.

He is, because it feels so good, too good, shame and horror and sickness all tangled up like razor wire and briar roses but his cunt _aches_ , every thrust makes him want more, harder, makes him long for heat and flesh instead of smooth stone, his inner walls clinging to the rod as if he can coax a knot from it if he just tries hard enough, plug up the dizzying need pulsing like a quasar between his legs. He is crying, he is disgusted with himself, he doesn’t understand how his body can want this but he’s falling harder and harder onto the toy, Tenebra’s poison-laced monologue painting pictures he can’t get out of his head, raising questions he doesn’t want answered. His cunt slides down around the toy and he can’t help imagining the demon prince being the one to fill him up; he wonders what that will look like and feel like, imagines being spread wide and held down for whatever Sorath has under its skirt, and his stomach heaves but his sex contracts with hunger, longing for something more than a toy. The spider-demon tells him he is made for this and Jace thinks of doing this, prepping himself like this, while he’s pregnant, fucking himself open so a demon prince can take him while he’s swollen with its clutch, and he sobs but his omega instincts, his hindbrain, shivers with something like anticipation.

 _Strong mate_ , it _(he)_ thinks, almost breathless with tears and the molten pleasure between his thighs. _Even stronger than Simon, alpha of alphas, such a huge pack to protect the litter_ —and that’s _not how it works_ , it’s _not_ , a demon hive is not a pack and Jace isn’t going to have a litter, it’ll be a _clutch_ , not sweet human babies but monsters raped into him—but logic doesn’t mean anything to that part of him. This is the part of his brain that lapped up Simon’s pheromones and came on his fingers and purred at the thought of being bred by him; and now it sends shudders of sick, twisted arousal rippling into his cunt at the thought of an alpha _(not an alpha!)_ strong enough to just _take_ him, steal him from his pack and fuck him full. This is the part that can’t understand the difference between being forced onto the dildo and the way a bonded omega kneels spread-legged for their mate at the start of their heat; this is the part that interprets the demonic Mark on his stomach as a bonding bite. An alpha’s venom alters an omega’s gametes, makes them incapable of uniting with another alpha’s sperm; isn’t that what Sorath’s done, made sure no one else can knock him up, claimed him like a human alpha would?

 _Bonded,_ his instincts whisper, purr, **_pleased_** and Jace wants to scream, it’s like his brain is being torn in two, ripped apart by the conflict of instinct and personhood, his biology and his soul. _Claimed, owned, mated,_ and he’s shuddering, shaking with disgust and _no_ and intense, vicious arousal, twisting up inside him like a pear of anguish[1], his cheeks and chin and throat all wet with tears and he’s panting, barely aware anymore of Tenebra watching, unable to hear the demon talking over the sound of his own breathing, the slutty, wet noises coming from his cunt with every thrust—

_Bonded and mated and so soon to be **bred** —_

He whimpers, unable to help himself, feeling dizzy and drugged and helpless with sick pleasure and sicker want, and Tenebra laughs.

“That is enough, I think,” it says, so clearly amused, and it takes Jace a long, terrible moment to figure out why.

He does not throw up—but only because Tenebra snaps “Do not!” like a whipcrack when Jace bends over and retches, heaves as if he can empty himself of himself. But he swallows, over and over as his mouth floods with the taste of copper and bile, gulping and crying and still impaled, the heat between his legs still slick and burning, beating like a drum to signal just how much of a fucking _whore_ he is, perverted and deviant and sick in the head. His body shakes and his stomach writhes, and he only manages to keep it down because he’s terrified of what the spider-demon might do if Jace makes a mess, if he disobeys. What’s _wrong_ with him, how can he, he has to resist the urge to twist his hips and screw himself just a little more and, and—

“Get up,” Tenebra snaps, its almost fond murmuring gone like a magic trick and Jace whimpers as he pulls himself off the dildo. It aches, aches and aches and he’s so _wet_ and he wants to jump back in the pool because nothing else will hide the stink of him; he thinks of kneeling in front of the demon prince so it can scent him and sobs, cringing even from the thought of it.

He just wants to die. Just let him die, let it be soon, please Raziel he can’t, he can’t live like this, he can’t bear to _be_ this—

“Follow me, little bitch-queen,” Tenebra says, and Jace remembers what this was for, realises what must be coming next, it hits him like lightning and no, no, _no_. “It is time you were presented to your court.”

*

It feels like being tied to a stake; the fire, and the horror; the heat and the unspeakable dread. Jace’s cunt is open and wet and the throbbing claws at his sanity; for a second he genuinely considers getting down on hands and knees and begging Tenebra to fuck him, to ease his need the way it had threatened to do.

_(Because he **needs** , he needs so badly he could cry—)_

He manages not to.

_(Because they are walking through the halls, because Tenebra is taking him to his mate, because soon-soon-soon he’ll lose his virginity on a demon prince’s cock and exchange it for a litter of young—)_

It is hard to think. Jace is full of screams; his cunt crying out to be fucked, and the rest of him shrieking with horror and terror at what’s to come. But he was trained as a Shadowhunter, and the needy, wanton lust presses on his brain but he can still put the pieces together, deduce likelihoods from the scraps of information he has.

Sorath raped Jace with its tongue in front of all or most of its court. After Tenebra’s mockery _(‘time to present you to your court’)_ it’s not so hard to realise that the demon prince probably means to claim him _(rape him, breed him)_ in front of an audience.

His cunt couldn’t care less. The rest of him…

It shouldn’t matter. After everything, it shouldn’t matter. How can anything be worse than the act of being bred by a demon prince? It would be no better to be raped in private, because it would still be a demon prince fucking him open, fucking him full of its cock and its seed and its sick, monstrous clutch. Everything else is only window dressing.

And yet. And yet.

His cunt and thighs are wet, aching and hungry and unfulfilled after the stimulation in the pool-room, but Jace himself is numb. Cold.

He has never felt fear like this. He did not know a human heart could feel fear like this and not stop like a broken clock.

It is a nightmare. It is real. Nothing has ever been less real.

He walks, not like a man going to his execution—he wishes he was going to his execution—but to something worse.

*

He is not surprised when Tenebra brings him back to the throne room. He wishes he could be, but maybe expecting the worse is less painful.

Marginally. It is all just degrees of pain, now. Degrees of horror.

How much is this going to hurt?

The room is packed. He would swear there are more demons here now then there were when he arrived. But maybe that makes sense; those who weren’t present when they brought his cage in would make sure to be here now. Maybe the prince has even made attendance compulsory. Be present for the conception of the royal heir, or else.

A bubble of hysteria rises up his throat like heartburn, barely swallowed before it can burst from his lips. _Royal heir_ —he’s starting to lose it. These monsters aren’t human. There are no crowns and liveries here, no kingdoms and no crests and definitely no chivalry. The Nephilim might call the demons controlled by a demon prince a court, but they’re more like hives, divided by biological caste beneath a monster worse than all the rest put together, one who controls them not through divine right but by darkest might. Prince, subjects, court—they’re human words poorly applied to inhuman concepts. They don’t mean Jace can ascribe human motivations and conventions onto creatures as far from human as it’s possible to be. Not if he wants to escape them.

Tenebra’s mockery aside, Jace is not a princess here. He’s not a queen. This isn’t his court, and for all that Sorath wants to get a royal clutch on him, it won’t make Jace a consort to anything. Being pregnant by a demon prince won’t earn him respect or power or influence.

Just more suffering.

Jace is shaking. After consideration, he doesn’t try to stop. If his fear excites Sorath enough, maybe it will forget to control itself—maybe Jace can die now, here, before he has to feel his body corrupted by the prince’s spawn.

_(Don’t think about what a death that would be. Don’t. Don’t. Any death that keeps more demon princes from being born is an honourable one, a good one._

_Don’t think about it.)_

He is not pretending. He is not faking. He is standing in front of a thousand demons more vulnerable than he has ever been, stripped of his weapons, his armour, his very Marks. Demons who know what is he and why he’s here, who saw him lose himself on their prince’s tongue and are waiting to see it again. Jace is so afraid he can hardly breathe and he knows that they call smell it, just like they can scent the wet, throbbing heat pulsing between his thighs, the sick, slutty need he can’t control. There’s no _reprima_ rune here.

 _(What kind of whore needs a_ reprima _to keep from getting wet for **demons**?)_

The prince is waiting. It—Tenebra called it _ney_ , which is not one of the dozen pronouns Jace is familiar with and not one he will let himself use, lest he fall into humanising these monsters again (there is a _reason_ the Nephilim never invented a pronoun for Infernals, or tried to learn what they call themselves)—sits on its throne like the statue of some dark god, all opal and obsidian and eyes like bottomless pits. _(Jace does not meet them, cannot meet them.)_ Its presence fills the cavern like carbon monoxide, thick and suffocating, pressing down on Jace’s shoulders, twisting like claws into his cunt. It smells nothing like a human alpha. It is beautiful like a fallen angel.

It watches him. Jace doesn’t look, can’t look up from the floor, but he feels the weight of its gaze and everything in him clenches tight and cold and horrified.

_(This is really happening.)_

They stop before the throne.

There is a silence, a pause, a tension that claws Jace’s guts before he remembers that he’s supposed to kneel.

There is another long, sickening moment before he can physically bring himself to do it. It’s not defiance. It’s fear like he’s never felt, fossilising him, calcifying his skin and lungs and legs; he half expects to hear a groan of protest when he manages to bend his knees at last, but there is no sound. He trembles violently as he lowers himself down, his mind blank and white with terror and the pit of his stomach full of ice, but somehow he manages it, manages some approximation of the position Tenebra drilled into him so horribly. He clasps his wrists behind his back and spreads his knees, tentatively, humiliation a searing burn in his cheeks and neck and cunt. They can smell him anyway, they all can, but his cunt lips part slickly and the shame of opening himself like this, _offering_ himself like this… He can see the prince’s taloned feet, the hem of its skirt. He wonders if it will fuck him on the floor or pull him onto its lap in the throne; he wonders which would be worse.

He flinches as the thought tugs another wave of pheromones from his glands, a pleading, pleasing cocktail of perfume meant to encourage the scary _(not-)_ alpha not to hurt him, to fuck him instead of killing him; it’s a scent that says _please don’t hurt me, I’ll be good_ and Jace can hear the demon prince inhaling, breathing it in, savouring it.

 _Please hurt me,_ Jace thinks, squeezing his eyes shut in a useless, pointless attempt to hold back his tears. _Please kill me._ It’s the best that he can hope for, it’s the only wish he has with a chance of being granted—

“It is still shy,” the prince says, and the laughter that answers it is like being stoned, being beaten. Jace’s soul is bleeding and bruised and in tatters, and he knows it’s only going to get worse. Everything before this has only been build-up. “We shall have to teach it better. But you did well, Tenebra. My thanks.”

Jace sees the demon prince beckon towards Tenebra from the corner of his vision, sees spider-demon’s legs move towards the throne—and then there is a sound that is so out of place Jace looks up without thinking—

The prince and Tenebra are _kissing_ , dark angel and spider monster half-hidden in the wreath of the prince’s tentacle-hair, the black tendrils squirming caressingly over Tenebra’s skin and Jace is frozen, repulsed beyond the reach of words. The picture they make together is _foul_ , the prince’s human-like lips and Tenebra’s huge gash of a maw—it’s poison for the eyes, and that would be enough, the visual of it would be horrifying enough but it makes Jace feel small and nothing-like and worthless, ignored and forgotten on the stone steps of the throne. He’s naked and soaking wet, more humiliated than he’s ever felt and they don’t even _care_ —and he doesn’t want them to, of course not, he wishes they could forget him for real, but it’s so incredibly dehumanising, it makes his eyes burn, makes him duck his head even more ashamed than before. It drives home his place here, his worth and his lack of it; he’s a toy, an object, a pet at best.

He can’t even take advantage of their distraction to get up and run. There’s nowhere to run to.

It feels like he’s been kneeling for a year, watched by countless eyes, before the demons part. The return of their attention is like an avalanche, cold and crushing, threatening to destroy him; he whimpers before he can stop himself, shrinks down.

 _“Very_ well done, my _[consort-beloved],”_ the prince purrs. It leans forward and Tenebra shifts out of the way, its horrible legs clicking against the floor as the prince leaves the throne to go down on one knee on the dais steps.

It takes Jace’s chin in hand.

At its touch Jace flinches, jerks back so hard he almost falls—but before he hits the ground the prince snags its claws through his collar, catching him. It holds him there, suspended, laid out almost parallel to the floor with only the prince’s support to keep him from falling, and Jace is open, bent back over his knees, his cunt on full display for this monster of monsters, wet and sopping—

Jace whimpers again, very softly, and the prince smirks.

It drags him up, and Jace’s heart is racing, crashing against his ribs like surf, pounding him to dust and sand. He half-expects it to drag him in like a riptide, take his mouth like a shark striking, but it doesn’t.

Instead he feels the brush of silk against his thighs, and when he jerks his head down he already knows what he’ll see—the long, serpentine coils of the demon’s not-hair slithering up and over Jace’s legs, tracing black spirals like twisted Marks over his skin. They are soft and gleam like oil and Jace makes a sound that comes straight from his hindbrain, horror-disgust, despair-shame and he tries to twist away but he knows it’s useless, knows it even before the prince holds him still for the smooth tentacles sliding up his legs—

He forgets to hold his hands behind his back, lets go of his wrists and reaches for the coils without thinking, desperate to pry them off, to _stop it_ —but the prince hisses, and it is nothing like the warm humanity of an alpha’s growl but it stops Jace in his tracks, turns his blood to antifreeze in his veins, sick and cold and trembling as the tendrils finally reach the juncture of his thighs. His hands clamp into useless fists as the tentacles probe at his cunt, rounded tips and pointed ones nuzzling at his slickness like tongues, like velvet fingers. They are slender as ribbons and when they dip into him, teasing his entrance, it doesn’t hurt at all—only in his soul, shrivelling with shame and burning humiliation as the tendrils squirm into his wet, aching sex, breaching him, prying him open, rubbing and twisting and coiling around each other and Jace shudders with instinctive revulsion, physically sick as they writhe and squirm inside him. It is disgusting, it is _foul_ , but they slip inside so easily, he is so wet they barely have to push, and the horror is not enough to drown out the moan building in the base of his throat as they eat away at the throbbing emptiness, devouring it as they wriggle deeper. Tears burn his eyes, blur his vision and it is a relief, it hides the prince’s pleasure from him as the sick writhing caresses the lips and inner walls of his cunt, stroking, filling—

The demon prince lets him go and to adjust his balance Jace sways forward automatically—and cries out as the movement drives him further onto the silken tentacles. His cunt slips wetly over the demon’s appendages and Jace’s hips move of their own accord without thinking, seeking it, seeking more. His legs are spread wide and he moans helplessly as his body sways, as the demon’s coils thrust lingeringly in and out of his slutty hole, teasing him, savouring his helpless, whorish need, and somewhere in the back of his mind Jace realises he’s not being held anymore, he could pull off and away, reject this even if they force him to take it next time—but his hips just keep rolling, his fists soften open on his thighs and the tendrils loop around his wrists, tug his palm towards his clit—

His cunt _ripples_ around the tendrils as his hand presses over his clit, the shock of unalloyed pleasure melting into and blending with the slithering pumping between his legs and Jace moans, arches into it, the rings on his clit clinking against the ones on his fingers. Oh please, oh please—he’s been teased and tortured for hours, maybe days, he has no idea how long it’s been but he’s been fingered and fisted and fucked and he needs to come, he _needs_ it, oh _please_ —

The tentacles withdraw all at once, drag his hand away from his clit and Jace jerks after them, keening, flushed, _aching_ , his cunt the mouth of a river—there is a small pool of slick on the floor between his legs and he hardly notices, doesn’t care, he needs and needs and _needs_ —

It takes him too long to hear the demons laughing.

There are no words for it. There haven’t been since he was taken to this place, they’ve dragged him deeper into shame than humanity has words for, and Jace wants to keep some shred of pride around him, wants to be worthy of Raziel’s blood, but he can’t be _(he was never worthy)._ He curls in on himself and the self-loathing claws razor-edged sobs from his throat, drags them out of his chest; how can he, how _can_ he, why is his body doing this? Why is it responding, how can it _like_ this, it’s a _demon_ , they’re all demons, he should be desert-dry and throwing up but instead his cunt is throbbing like a heart, drooling for it. If the prince was an alpha—if Sorath were an alpha then at least it would make sense, at least then it wouldn’t be Jace’s fault, only biology, nothing he could control. But the only pheromones Jace can smell are his own, and that leaves no explanations, no excuses to hide behind, it rakes Jace’s mind and makes him want to scream with horror-denial—

Maybe they’re right. Maybe he _is_ made for this. What else is he supposed to think, what else makes any kind of sense, other than there being something wrong with him, some crossed wire in his brain that makes him moan when a demon toys with him.

Did they know? Could they _tell_ , is that why they came after him? The Vetis demon said there were rumours. What rumours? His _reprima_ never failed while he was on patrol, there should have been no rumours, there was no way they could know he was an omega— Unless it shows. Unless whatever’s wrong with him, sick in him, whatever makes him keen and whimper and slick up for a demon’s tongue and fist and tentacle shows somehow, and they knew, and came hunting for it. Knowing he would make the perfect little bitch-queen.

He can’t stop crying.

“More diamonds, _kunnarnatar?”_ the prince asks, and Jace doesn’t even flinch when it fists a hand in his hair and drags his head back, forces his face up. It is horribly, terribly beautiful, almost blindingly so, airbrushed and perfect and impossible to mistake for anything human. “Not even bred, and you give us such treasures.”

Jace’s hands are not tied. He is not chained. He could fight this, he _should_ fight it, push or trick the demon into forgetting its strength and killing him quickly _(instead of slowly, worn out by rape after rape and clutch after clutch until his body just **breaks** ). _

But the prince’s grip softens, and it strokes Jace’s hair with horrifying, terrifying gentleness. And Jace doesn’t fight it.

“Have they told you my name yet?” the demon asks, the tips of its claws grazing Jace’s scalp. The touch sends sick shivers down his spine, revulsion and something that glitters.

Jace’s throat is burning, and his mouth is as dry as his cunt ought to be and isn’t. He is being petted like a dog, and he is submitting to it, and the disbelief and shame are making him tremble. It feels like a long, long time before he can make himself speak, and when he does the word emerges as a whisper. “Sorath.”

The prince flashes an amused expression towards Tenebra before returning its attention to Jace. “You would call that a nickname. My full usename is Anzakswarjet-Sorathzvan-Xjetraneh.” Its other hand, its free hand, reaches for Jace’s mouth; it runs a claw over Jace’s lip and Jace closes his eyes and shudders.

He opens them quickly, before the prince can tell him to. It’s worse, not to see.

“Do you understand what that means?” the prince asks, patiently. When Jace stares at it blankly, helplessly, it repeats the string of harsh, guttural syllables for him.

Jace swallows. The translation spell uncombs the tangle of it into some semblance of sense, but… “H-Heart of the Anzakswar…hive? Court?” When it nods, he licks his lips—licks its claw, completely by accident, and the demon smirks at his shocked whimper—and continues. “…S-Sorath, demon p-prince of, of, the Xjet…bloodline? Lineage?” He swallows again—reminds himself, just in time, not to wet his lips again. “First of the line,” he finishes in a whisper.

“Well done,” the demon purrs, and Jace flinches, ducks his head away from its cold, cruel smile. Instantly he freezes, wondering if it’ll punish him for rejecting its touch, but instead its hand drops from his mouth to his belly, just above the belt of gold around his hips. And that’s _worse_ , its fingers splay possessively over the black Mark there, over Jace’s womb, and Jace shys away but this time it _does_ stop him, grabs his hair again to hold him still, and Jace sobs, curls his hands into useless, shaking fists against his thighs and lets this happen. “But you perceive, treasure, a _[Hive-Heart]_ ’s identity is inextricably wound with neir _[hive/court/pack]_.”

Jace is hardly listening, barely capable of comprehending; Sorath traces a fingertip—clawtip—along the lines of the rune, the one Jace didn’t choose and didn’t ask for, that turns his womb from a part of him _(one he never wanted)_ into a monster’s toy, locked up for a demon’s pleasure and stamped with its name—

_(Its name, and its name is—)_

—and Jace doesn’t understand, doesn’t put it together, not until Sorath bends closer and purrs into his ear, soft and secret, “In belonging to me, little bitch-queen, you belong also to _them.”_

Them.

Them?

_Them._

It hits like a battering ram just as the demon prince thrusts him away, hard enough to hurl him half a dozen feet away. The stone floor is unforgiving but Jace is a Shadowhunter, even shocked and traumatised the training is in his bones; he lands properly without needing to think, rolls to displace the force and comes back up in a crouch, reaching for a blade that isn’t there—

Remembers that it isn’t there, that it never will be again—

And an invisible force slams him forward onto his hands and knees.

He cries out more from shock than pain as his palms slap against the ground; his knees jerk back and spread wide and it’s not him, this is not, _he’s not doing this_ and it’s a train derailing in his head, the panic and terror and disbelief, the horror bursting like rotten fruit as he fights to move and can’t. He _wrenches_ against the hold and his muscles bunch but nothing else happens, and he can’t turn his head, he can’t even, _his eyes won’t blink_ —

 _HIS EYES WON’T BLINK_ —

They burn and water but he can’t move his eyelids and Jace has never imagined a cage like this, his very bones become the bars and he opens his mouth _(he can still open his mouth)_ to scream but nothing comes out, no sound at all, he screams and screams pure silence and the fear is an animal thing, primal and blinding, stop it stop it LET ME GO—

He can’t even _blink_ —

With his face turned toward the floor he can only just see Sorath rise to its feet, and Jace is shaking like a thing about to shatter apart, his breath races in and out of his lungs, he is hyperventilating and _CAN’T BLINK_ and he thinks the demon prince is smiling. “Do you not like your _[ringed puppet strings]_ , treasure? And you look so lovely in them.”

The mockery swirls through Jace’s brain like blood in milk, thorns in sweetness, but the pieces click together: the rings. It’s the rings, they’re not decoration they’re _this_ , the joints of a doll so they can position him however they want him whenever they want him, and Jace screams again and no one can hear but the prince laughs, flicks a shining claw and Jace’s mouth snaps shut, his teeth click together and he remembers the gold caps on his molars, the piercing in his tongue, the dots of gold on his eyelids and the _collar_ —Sorath’s blood, the demon’s blood is in his collar and maybe in all the other rings too, it can control his every move like a remote-controlled toy—

_( **It can keep him from killing himself** )_

—And Jace screams and screams and screams behind closed teeth without a sound as Sorath descends the steps of its throne.

“You are mine,” the demon prince tells him, and its voice is louder now, loud enough to ring through the cavern, “but as I am the _[Heart of the Hive]_ , what is mine is my _[hive/court]_ ’s.” It gestures to the surrounding demons with one ebon wing. “One member of each caste will sheath themselves in you, to open your body for mine and bind you to the _[hive/court]_. When they are done, you will be claimed, and they will defend you against any who would take you from us.”

Jace can’t breathe. He can’t breathe he can’t breathe this cannot be happening, this isn’t happening, he’s going to wake up any second now and he’ll never reject Simon again, he’ll take the alpha’s bite and give him all the pups he wants and be so fucking grateful for the rest of his life, he wants to wake up he wants to wake UP—

Sorath smiles his way. “This is necessary,” it tells him. “You will need this bond with them. And you could not sheath me without their help.”

But wasn’t that what the dildo was for, no no no no no don’t do this, don’t, wake up Jace, WAKE UP—

He can’t even sob, the tears are falling from his unblinking eyes onto the floor and his chest is heaving but he can’t make a sound, can’t even _cry_ as the demon prince ascends the stair again and seats itself in its throne, leisurely and relaxed with Tenebra standing at its left hand and there are thousands and thousands of demon breeds, more than any Shadowhunter could remember, but they are divided into castes—

Into _twenty-one_ castes—

“Bring in the first,” Sorath orders, its voice casual and its gaze burning like a brand on Jace’s gold-chained body—

This isn’t real it isn’t real this isn’t happening this CANNOT BE HAPPENING—

He hears a skittering sound from behind him, and suddenly he can move his head, the pressure holding his skull in place is gone and he snaps his head around, straining for a glimpse of what’s coming without thinking, and he can blink again but he doesn’t even notice the relief because it’s—

No—

It’s a _Ravener_ —

 _NO_ —

He can’t comprehend it, it cannot be happening, two Dahak demons guiding the scorpion-like monster out of the crowd by the black chains looped around its neck and for a second Jace thinks/hopes/is desperate to believe that it’s them, that it’s the Dahak demons who are going to fuck him because—because otherwise—

But he hears Hodge’s voice in his head, listing the castes over and over until they were embedded in Jace’s memory, and if they’re going to let every caste at him then they’re going to start at the top or the bottom, surely, it’s obvious, and Dahaks are _palkollinen_ caste but Raveners are _eläin_ , lowest of the low, the bestial caste, the family of demons no smarter than dogs, and the Dahaks are leading their charge closer and Jace can’t open his mouth to scream but he throws himself against the rings, desperate, more desperate than he’s ever been, whipping his head as he strains and strains to break free but he can’t even _twitch_ —

He looks back over his shoulder because he can’t help it, because he has to know how close it is, and it’s a _Ravener_ , the size of a St Bernard with none of the lovable aspect of a big dog. It looks more like a giant scorpion than anything else, black scales armouring an insectile body, too many eyes on its domed head, scuttling legs and a long barbed tail. Someone’s put a steel cap over the tail’s poisoned tip, and a wire muzzle over its snout, and hysteria shreds up Jace’s throat because of course they don’t want it to kill him. That would negate the entire point of the exercise.

They want it to _fuck_ him. Mount him like a bitch and take his virginity with whatever generative organ it has while a thousand other demons watch, this thing, this monster who’s so far from self-aware they have to chain it and muzzle it and drag it to him like a bull to breeding, like it’s an animal—it _is_ an animal, he’s fought them enough times to know, they talk but only like parrots do—by the Angel it’s an _animal_ , it’s, that’s, he can’t, he _can’t_ —

“No, please don’t, _please,”_ he begs, and doesn’t realise he’s speaking until he hears his own voice. Sorath is letting him speak, and Jace whips his head around to look up at the demon prince pleadingly, his tattered shreds of pride abandoned with the sound of the rattling chains and the Ravener’s footsteps echoing in his head. “Please Sorath _please_ , I’ll do anything, anything you want, just don’t make me, don’t let it—I’ll take _you_ , please, let me, let me sheath you, I’ll be good, please, please, _please_ ,” and he’s sobbing, he can finally cry and now he can’t stop, his breath like sandpaper in his throat and he can’t stop shaking and he can’t move, he can’t _move_ , legs spread wide like he wants it, like he _wants_ this and at least the demon prince is sentient, at least it’s more than a mindless beast, that would be better, _anything_ would be better—

But Sorath shakes its head, doesn’t even bother to answer him, and Jace almost screams as a hand pushes between his legs, slips its fingers into his cunt without a moment’s hesitation, indifferent to permission. Jace can’t even jerk away from it, can’t close his legs as the fingers thrust and twist inside him, making slick, wet noises with their efforts, and his clit has gone soft and the slick isn’t fresh but it’s too late, he’s already soaked, that he’s stopped making it now won’t help him at all—

He looks, his mind a snowstorm of panic, and sees another Dahak demon as it withdraws its hand, its dripping fingers; they slide free with a wet _pop_ that makes Jace burn with shame. The demon goes and wipes its hand on the Ravener’s muzzle and Jace sees the moment the Ravener understands what’s going on, recognises the stink of Nephilim omega. Has it been used for this before, he wonders hysterically, do they always use the same stud when they break in a new _kunnarnatar_ , or do all demons just instinctively know that scent, recognise it as _warm slutty hole that needs breeding_ —? It doesn’t matter, who cares, because now the Ravener is tugging on its chains, doesn’t need to be pulled along anymore, eager and hungry to get at its treat and Jace is crying, wrenching at the rings that won’t budge, won’t move, desperate pleas tumbling out of his mouth but no one’s listening, no one cares, and Jace twists his head as much as he can, driven by the morbid need to see it coming, know when it’s about to—

“A moment, my master?” Tenebra asks, and Sorath lifts a finger.

The Dahaks stop dead, and the Ravener hisses with frustration as it’s stopped just feet away from Jace’s prone, helpless body. It lunges for him, snarling, and the chains rattle but they hold.

Jace can’t even flinch.

“I think your bitch wishes to see its own defilement,” Tenebra purrs. “See how it strains to see its first _[key-mate]_?”

Jace looks back at the throne, at the spider-demon spinning words like a web to trap him _(as if he isn’t already trapped, isn’t he trapped enough?)_ That’s not—that’s _not_ why he’s looking, it isn’t, it’s not—!

Tenebra’s fingers brush Sorath’s arm. “Will you not indulge the treasure?” it asks, garnet gaze fixed on Jace. “With a mirror, perhaps?”

A _mirror?_ For an instant, sheer confusion drives the horror back a little—a very, very little. Why would Tenebra want a mirror—?

But Sorath laughs. “Yes,” it says, leaning forward and gesturing for someone to do something, out of Jace’s line of sight. “Bring the _kunnarnatar_ a mirror—and bring me that mirror’s twin!”

It is agony; Jace has to wait, and wait, knowing the Ravener is so close, hearing it rattle its chains with its eagerness to get to him. It doesn’t feel like a reprieve; the tension twists higher and higher, tighter and tighter until it feels as though all his bones will snap with the pressure. It’s still happening, still going to happen, this is not a derailing, and it’s all he can think of, all he can see, he’s helpless to stop imagining it, stop trying to picture it. Maybe if he’s lucky the muzzle will come loose, maybe it’ll bite his neck like a lion pinning his lioness and pump him full of venom and he’ll just _die_ , but it won’t be soon enough, won’t be—it won’t be—

He wants to scream but there’s no one to hear it, no one will come and rescue him, no one will _care_ —

A serpentine demon approaches the throne and kneels, proffering what looks like a large oval of silver. The prince accepts it, props it on the arm of the throne so both it and Tenebra can see it clearly, and Jace almost leaps out of his skin _(he wishes)_ as another demon comes into his view from behind him. It kneels, too, and Jace’s heart is racing, he wants so desperately to pull away and _can’t_ and he closes his eyes tightly, trembling, sick, his tears are making a puddle on the floor between his hands and he’s too fucking terrified to be ashamed—

There’s a chink, like the sound of silver on stone, and when Jace can make himself look he understands at once.

They’ve placed a mirror on the floor beneath him, between his knees.

He stares at it, head bent to look at it, and can’t believe it. The glass is angled just so, showing him his clit and thighs and the gleaming-wet mouth of his cunt, and when he jerks his head up to glance at the prince’s mirror—this mirror’s twin—

Oh Raziel, that’s what a twinned mirror means, isn’t it? _Linked_ mirrors—so they can see what the other mirror sees—

So that when the Ravener has him, they can see—see where it, it _joins_ with him—watch the monster take his virginity from close enough to see his hymen tear—

His mind is just going to break, it’s just going to shatter, he can’t take this, he can’t comprehend it, it cannot be real, _it cannot be real_ , this is not happening, this is not his _life_ —

The demon prince makes a low, crooning sound of approval in its throat at whatever it sees in the mirror _(Jace, Jace’s cunt open and wet for a monster, his clit clasped in the controlling rings, the gold bands glittering around his thighs)_ and gestures towards the Ravener’s handlers. “Continue.”

And then it’s happening, no more pauses, Jace hears the Dahaks grunt with effort and the chains rattle and the Ravener’s legs clicking on the stone floor and no, no no no no no _“No!”_ It’s not real, it can’t be real but the ground is hard beneath his knees and palms and the air is cool on his damp thighs and it feels too real, no, no no _“No_ please, please don’t, please!” He can’t even claw at the ground, can’t move his legs or arms or body, and he sobs when the Ravener’s harsh breath pants across the back of his legs, a scream building like a heart-attack, disbelief and terror flashing like lightning in his brain, striking and burning as the monster rears up and onto him, guided by its handlers—

 _“Please!”_ he cries, knowing it’s useless, what do demons know of mercy but the weight of it pressing down on his back, heavy and solid and slick, _slimy_ against his bare skin—he can’t, he can’t, no no no no please as its legs fold right around him, clasping him like prey or a bitch to be bred and he can’t move can’t fight can’t do anything but kneel there and take it Alec, Izzy, Maryse-Robert _Simon_ , someone, _anyone_ , please, _please_ —

The Ravener hitches against him, and Jace cries out as something hard scrapes against the back of his thigh, missing his hole, the demon snarls with frustrated impatience and jabs again and it _hurts_ , the racheted-up dread and horror, he can’t stop sobbing as he fights to twist his hips away and can’t and then there’s one of the Dahaks’ hands, he can just glimpse it in the mirror, closed around the Ravener’s organ and guiding it—

Guiding it against the lips of his cunt—

And Jace _screams_ as it breaches him, screams and screams with the nauseating horror no no please Raziel _no_ as the demon on him-in him snarls its triumph. It slams in almost instantly and it’s a shockwave tearing through Jace’s body, white and hot, a hard spike of flesh driving through his softness and forcing him open without mercy; the thrust seems to drive through Jace’s brain like a stake and shreds his ability to think, unmakes him, because it’s pain on every level, physical-mental-emotional- _spiritual_ —but oh God it’s pleasure too, it is, it shouldn’t be but it _is_ and his scream is as much denial as fear-revulsion, denial of the heat that ripples outward from his blood-flushed, hair-trigger cunt as a demon rips away his virginity while a thousand others watch. It’s impossible, it can’t, _he_ can’t, but its hips snap hard enough to bruise against his thighs and his insides are still wet and soft with his earlier sick need and the friction, the fullness—he can feel it, feel every terrible pounding thrust and he cries with despair, his whole body revolting and rippling, horrified and molten all at once. It’s him, it’s real, it’s a _demon_ and he can’t take it and can’t not, can’t fight can’t get away and it’s driving into him, fucking its bitch like it means to fill him up with a clutch of its own and he’s so wet there’s hardly any friction at all but the stretch of it burns, painful-good sparks in his sloppy cunt, sloppy and wet for a _Ravener_ , and this is so sick, it’s _so sick_ and he can’t stand it and has no choice, feels it slam in and in and _in_ until he’s sure he’s going to choke on it if he doesn’t suffocate under the self-loathing first. It, it, animal-monster- _demon_ and it doesn’t seem to matter and he wants to die, he wants to _die_ , screaming for them to _stop it please **please**_ as every thrust fans the fire between his legs, tainted hellfire stoking the heat, stroking it, the heavy weight of the monster on his back shifting and thrusting, using him like a toy like a bitch and he can’t parse the horror, which is worse, it pulls him in two, that it’s a Ravener or that he _likes it_ , what kind of monster does that make _him_?

He sobs, brokenly, helplessly. They were right, they were right all along, he _was_ made for this—he was never a Shadowhunter, never a true Nephilim, no Nephilim omega would or _could_ feel like this—he’s something else, a demon-tainted cuckoo child left in a Nephilim nest and now Hell’s taken him back, now he’s where he belongs, on his hands and knees for a demon prince’s court—

He doesn’t want to believe it but nothing else makes sense, nothing else explains it, how else-why else does it feel so good, like poisoned honey flowing through his veins—the tight brutal grasp of the Ravener’s limbs clasped around Jace’s barrel, holding him in place for its hard, vicious cock like he might get away if it doesn’t; its pounding thrusts spearing his cunt open over and over without a second’s pause, devouring the aching emptiness inside him—there should be no pleasure here and he wants to throw up and he wants to scream but he’s terrified that if he opens his mouth a moan will spill out instead like a bloodstained razor, will cut him open and let all his sickness out for everyone to see—

_(But they already know)_

He grits his teeth and clenches his eyes shut under the onslaught, nausea and despair and horror and self-hatred twisted into a sick aphrodisiac because under it all that’s all he can feel, the stretch in his cunt and the unstoppable solidity filling him up, forcing full all his emptiness, making him a sheath for its animal pleasure—and that’s all he is, a wet hole for a Ravener’s cock, entertainment for all the eyes on him, for the prince on its throne watching every thrust with its gleaming black eyes—

“Are you hiding, _kunnarnatar?”_ Sorath’s voice purrs and Jace’s eyes snap open but no, the prince is still on its throne, hasn’t moved—and yet its cruel, crooning whisper spills into Jace’s head like acid rain, comes out of the gold dots in his ears to pour more poison on his soul. The Ravener is hammering against him, into him, without the rings Jace would be crumpled under the force of its thrusts and he doesn’t have it in him to block the words out, to resist as the gold band around his brow and the collar tight around his throat forces his head down as surely as a fist in his hair, indifferent to his crying. “There is no hiding from what you are, little treasure. Look!”

The gold holds his eyelids open, pushes his head down and Jace can still move his eyes but he can’t see anything else, it engulfs his vision—there’s only the mirror and the truth it shows and he stares at it disbelievingly, helplessly, shot past horror; the thick black rod pistoning in and out of his stretched and straining cunt, shining with slick, his cunt fairly drooling for the monstrous cock pounding him—it’s sick it’s _obscene_ and it’s _him_ , that’s _him_ , his body clasped lovingly tight around the length violating him over and over and _over_ —

“See yourself opened for me,” Sorath croons, and Jace sobs, tries to shake his head in denial and can’t, _can’t_. “Watch the court claim you, _kunnarnatar_. You were born to be ours, to be _mine_ , and you know it—so beautiful for us, so _wet_ …”

No, no no no it’s not true, it isn’t, _he_ isn’t, he can’t be, but the truth sears into his eyes and his thighs are wet and gleaming, every thrust blazes radioactive gold through every nerve and no, not for a demon, not for a _Ravener_ , please please no don’t, drops of his slick dripping onto the mirror like blood, like his soul is bleeding, and it smears on the glass like oil but not enough to hide the worst part—his hard clit bobbing with every stabbing thrust, the depraved-obscene in-out slide of a _Ravener_ in his slutty human cunt and his clit is _hard_ , throbbing between his legs and he can _see_ it, flushed in the grip of its rings, he’s so fucking _sick_ —

Alec, Izzy, Simon—they wouldn’t help him now even if they could, if they could see, could see him—

The prince jerks his head back up and his teeth are pried open just as the velvet-lined rings around his clit twist and constrict and Jace _screams_ , depraved pleasure exploding like a star between his legs and no, oh no, please no _don’t_ but it doesn’t stop, the velvet shifting and caressing his aching hardness so subtly, so minutely but it’s too much, it’s awful-sick-no- _please_ and his cunt is spasming around the demon’s cock, clamping and rippling and it makes a snarling howling sound above him and the friction of it against the lips of his sex, the thick fullness pounding at his insides without pause, without mercy, the rings squeezing and stroking his clit no no _no_ , please Raziel no, **_no_** _—!_

He can’t close his mouth, they won’t let him and Jace wails with helpless, horrified bliss as he comes, wave after wave of mind-shattering pleasure racing through his every cell, bursting black and gold between his legs like a blasphemous miracle. He can’t stop it, can’t resist it, caught in some Satanic spell, virginity broken open on a Ravener’s cock to turn him into Hell’s Whore and the pleasure is the curse, sweeping through him, marking him, _claiming_ him and he can’t fight it, raped and used and his body singing the _Pater Noster_ backwards in sick praise, his cunt convulsing with toxic ecstasy and he’s burning, burning alive in sulphur and shame and unholy rapture—

The Ravener howls and comes into the softness massaging and milking its organ; its legs clamp tighter around Jace’s body, squeezing the breath out of him as it spills its fluids into his cunt in a warm rush. Jace can feel every drop of it, viscous and oily and there’s so _much_ , it pumps and pumps into him, splashing his inner walls with nauseating warmth. The demon humps and thrusts against his hips and Jace shudders, moans with helpless disgust and even more helpless pleasure, tears streaming down his cheeks as its ejaculate overflows from his stretched cunt, slides past its jack-hammering cock. He feels it trickle down his thighs and weeps even as his body purrs and hums with the aftershocks of his own release.

Release. As if it’s anything but another chain on him, a collar soldered around his heart and soul. He _came_ , how could he, how, crying out like the slut he is, Hell’s Whore coming on a Ravener’s cock and loving every second of it—

He cries. Cries and cries and wants to die as the Ravener finishes above him, in him, thrusts until it’s satisfied that the bitch is bred. When it pulls out Jace winces, his cunt burning, and his stomach heaves at the gush of demon fluids that stream down his legs. Its legs release him and he can breathe again and wishes he couldn’t; he hangs his head, sobbing, barely aware of the rattle of the Ravener’s chains, the weight lifting from his back as they drag the monster away, back to whence it came.

His mind is in pieces, splintered. Thoughts flash like shards of glass catching the light, falling and spinning. He can’t. He can’t. A Ravener. He came. The liquids soaking his cunt, his thighs, the stink of sex and omega. He can’t.

He just wants to die.

A finger probes at his cunt and he flinches— _can_ flinch, just, a little, no more than a twitch and he can’t even care, just whimpers with pleasure-pain as the digit slides easily into him, into his leaking, fucked-out cunt. It feels around and he shudders, his flesh over-sensitive and sore, and he can’t do anything but cry as it withdraws.

“No tearing,” a voice tells the prince, and Jace doesn’t look up, doesn’t want to see if Sorath is pleased.

He stares at the mirror. Watches the black, oily fluids the Ravener left in him drip out of his sex. Too much for his sloppy cunt to hold.

“Excellent,” the prince says. “Clean the mirror, then, and continue.”

A four-fingered hand intrudes on Jace’s vision, wipes the mirror clean of omega slick and Ravener leavings with a cloth. Jace doesn’t have the strength to try and fight the rings’ hold. To look up. To breathe, almost.

He’s still aching. Raped and fucked to overflowing, but his cunt isn’t satisfied. It feels like it did in the alleyway, after he came on the dildo; he still _wants_ , sluttily hungry not just for a fucking but for a _knot_ , to seal him full and breed him. He can feel the burn in his bones, the instinct to spread his legs wider, tilt his hips up pleadingly, invitingly; his orgasm banked the flame but it’s already building up again, he catches himself thinking dreamingly _twenty-one castes_ and wants to cut his own throat.

“You did well, treasure,” Sorath’s voice whispers, and Jace can’t even sob. “Such a precious jewel Sammael has given us. You hunger for us still, don’t you?” The rings on his clit seem to shiver, and Jace whimpers, cries as their velvet linings stroke and fondle him, coaxing him back to unwilling hardness, no, no, _no_ , please not again, please— “The Anzakswarjet will take care of you, treasure, we will fill your need—”

“No,” Jace whispers, his throat hoarse from screaming, begging, “no, please,” but there are footsteps approaching from behind, his cunt is still dripping and the rings on his clit caress and tease and there’s nowhere to run, nowhere at all.

The next caste is _sika_ , the second, smarter beast-caste, and when the muzzled, cobra-hooded Elapid mounts him all Jace can do is scream as its hard, scaly cock stakes its claim on-in his sopping cunt.

It hurts more, this time; the Elapid isn’t noticeably thicker but the lips of Jace’s sex feel burnt, stretched raw from the first rape, and this demon feels even harder, even more solid, drives into him even more viciously than the Ravener did. It hurts it hurts but it doesn’t _only_ hurt _(he wishes it only hurt,)_ the rich twisted craving that detonates as he’s slammed full, fingers of flame tugging and clawing between his legs and the pain and pleasure mix together like blood and wine. The scales on its length rasp against his inner walls even through his slick, but that doesn’t stop his body welcoming it; soon enough his cunt is gulping around the dark green cock stretching him obscenely, throbbing, he can feel his pulse between his legs and the Elapid’s drool smearing onto the back of his neck and every thrust is wet and loud, squelching with omega slick and Ravener ejaculate as another demon fucks him.

He comes again. The rings around his clit twist and stroke and it’s like coming into Sorath’s hand, the helplessness, the horror. The prince makes him watch, forces his head down so all he can see is his clit jerking against his abdomen, his cunt spasming on the Elapid’s animal cock, clenching and fluttering like it’s begging for the demon to come in him.

It does. The warm wet splashes of its fluid soaking Jace’s insides makes him sick, makes him gag until the collar closes his throat, keeps the contents of his stomach down.

But there’s no knot, and even as they drag the Elapid off him, out of him, Jace’s cunt is still aching, empty, pleading. Unsatisfied, a greedy slutty hole even as demon come sluices down his thighs.

_(Black, oily come that makes it look as if his cunt is full of poison, makes it look like he’s a monster too—some kind of succubus that kills through sex, fuck him and die, and he wishes, he **wishes** —)_

They check him again for tearing, clean off the mirror so there’s nothing to spoil the prince’s view, and it’s a Dahak next, _palkollinen_ caste. For all Jace knows it’s one of the ones who brought the Ravener to him, maybe the one who guided the scorpion’s length into his sex like a farmer breeding his animals. He hears it approach, its octopus-legs skittering oddly over the stone, and braces for its lizard-body to mount him, helplessly, uselessly. At least _palkollinen_ aren’t animals, they can think and reason—that’s—it’s better, isn’t it, a little, a little—

But it doesn’t climb on top of him, not right away; its hot breath puffs against the back of his legs and he gasps with aborted shock as its speaking-tentacles stroke through the lips of his cunt. Dahaks have no mouths, they form speech by vibrating the cluster of short tentacles on the lower halves of their heads, and Jace can’t move away, can’t close his legs to it as the tentacles probe slyly at his sex, curling and pawing, teasing his sore lips to make him twitch and whimper, toying with him, driving home how wet and dirty he is. The shame of it _(dirty whore, sextoy for demons, look at you, look at this)_ has him crying again by the time its tentacles slide into him, half a dozen of them at once pushing in on the leavings of his previous partners, and Jace groans with disgust and depraved want through his tears as they squirm in, thick as fingers and wriggling like worms. It feels so _wrong_ , unnatural and sick in a way even the Ravener’s cock didn’t; he shakes his head and pleads for it to _“stop,_ stop it, please,” but the Dahak only—purrs, or something like it, all the tentacles suddenly vibrating inside him and Jace cries out at the shockwave of stunning pleasure, a wordless keen of purely physical delight that cuts through his tears like a knife. The tentacles keep humming as they writhe, twisting and coiling and pumping, and his abused cunt stings a little but it’s drowned out beneath that mind-melting purr. Jace moans and the Dahak pushes forward, seals its ‘mouth’ against his flesh to drive the tentacles in as deep as they can go and it’s like being fucked by a cluster of prehensile tongues, the humming vibration twisting into his cunt and his clit and driving him _crazy_ , he’s sobbing with pleasure and thrusting his hips back before he realises that he can, opening his legs wider, wider, screwing himself on the Dahak’s mouth feverishly, frantically, the prince whispering twisted endearments in his ears _(“That’s it, treasure, that’s it. Give yourself over to the pleasure. Let your body guide you; it knows what it wants, what it’s for…”)_ and Jace barely hears a word, can’t comprehend them, just shakes and shakes and—

—comes. He wails with pleasure, his cunt clasping the Dahak’s tentacles in waves of noxious bliss, his inner walls rippling, blazing with molten gold. It’s so good, he can’t, he can’t even think, there’s nothing but the squirming pumping thrusting purring between his legs, oh Raziel, oh _God_ —

The aftershocks are still bleeding through his body when the Dahak slides free, mounts him, and nudges its generative organ into Jace’s purring, drooling cunt. Its octopus-legs—much longer, much thicker tentacles than the ones still dripping with Jace’s slick—clasp his body almost tenderly as it slides in between his thighs and nestles into his sodden softness.

It fucks him slowly. Carefully. Rocking in and out of him, its mouth-tentacles petting his neck and hair, curling around his face to flick at his lips. Jace is too dazed to think, to think of resisting, doesn’t know if it’s him or the demon prince’s gold that parts his lips, lets the tentacles into his mouth. They squirm in over his tongue, tasting of his own faintly sweet slick and a bitterness that must be Ravener and Elapid fluids, and they settle there, a heavy thickness in his mouth, curling and pumping shallowly as the Dahak’s cock pistons in and out of his cunt. Jace moans mindlessly, the sound muffled around the tentacles, and drool and demon leavings slide down his lips and chin as he’s fucked.

“Exquisite,” Sorath calls him, stroking his clit with the velvet-lined rings as he sways his hips in time with his Dahak lover. “Beautiful, treasure. So perfect for us.” Its voice is hoarse and hot, low. “Watching you welcome our court between your thighs… You make waiting for my turn a delicious agony, little bitch.”

Jace barely hears the words.

He comes twice more under the Dahak’s thick body, milking and massaging its cock like the perfect _kunnarnatar_ whore, moaning his bliss around the tentacles stretching his lips. It’s only after his second release that his sense of self starts to coalesce again, that he starts to remember where he is and what is happening, and by then the Dahak is heaving grotesquely above him, its cock embedded between his thighs as it snaps harder and harder into him. Jace’s next moan is one of horror, but if the demon notices it doesn’t care, humping and thrusting single-mindedly with the same maddeningly regular rhythm that’s already driven Jace to two orgasms, only now each thrust comes harder, faster—

Suddenly it jams the tentacles in his mouth down into his throat and without warning he’s choking, gagging, his airway almost entirely blocked by the pulsating coils squirming into his gullet. Pure mindless panic shreds past everything else, overwhelms the shame and disgust and sickened self-hatred; he fights it like an animal and the rings let him, let him struggle against the tentacles stroking the inside of his throat and the ones holding him in place for the Dahak’s cock, he’s bucking and writhing and trying to scream from his stuffed-full mouth and he can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe_ and the demon is still fucking him, harder and harder, he’s impaled and stuffed full from both ends and the edges of his vision are turning to blurry shadows—

His orgasm hits him like a train; it explodes through him like a grenade, burning and jagged and razor-sharp, scattering shrapnel to cut him to pieces. He screams around the tentacles but they’re already withdrawing, slithering back up his throat and out of his mouth as he comes and comes, convulsing in the Dahak’s grip and around its solid cock. The pleasure is dark and rich and blinding, terrifying in its brutal intensity, and Jace is drowning in it, coughing and keening and writhing against the Dahak’s body, against its hips. Distantly he hears the demon make a sound like a human groan above him; as if from far away he feels its cock jerk where it’s rooted in Jace’s sex, is faintly, vaguely aware of it gushing hot, sticky fluids into him, coming, spending itself between his thighs. But is brain is high on oxygen and he can hardly feel anything else but each beautiful breath gasping into his lungs.

For a little while. Panting, heaving with vicious aftershocks, he’s aware enough to whine unhappily without thinking when the Dahak withdraws, its organ sliding free of his cunt with a soaked, sloppy noise that all but echoes in the cavernous room. The audience laughs, amused by the slutty omega, but Jace’s sex is pulsing unhappily, needily, craving more cock like a junkie desperate for a hit. It takes him too long to understand the amusement running through the crowd, Tenebra’s low chuckling, but by the time the Dahak’s tentacle-limbs unwrap lingeringly from his body, Jace gets it.

He just—he just whined in protest, he _protested_ his demon rapist being finished with him, and his body’s still purring with pleasure. How many times did he just come, moaning like a whore for a _demon_ , the rings let him move and he screwed himself on his rapist’s cock rather than try and run away, and he can’t take it, his body feels so good but his mind is a nightmare, is coming apart at the seams. Without the Dahak clasping him tight, without the rings’ power to hold him up Jace collapses onto the floor, his exhausted arms and legs giving out under his weight, and he cries, tries to curl in on himself and hide his tear-streaked, come-streaked face from the demon prince who owns him as he sobs with despair. The cool mirror presses against his clit and its coldness feels good against his burning-hot cunt, almost soothing against the cruel heat, and he’s leaking the ejaculate of three different demons, his cunt is twitching and pulsing still from that last orgasm and the demons’ fluids are spilling out of him in a black, sticky mess. He doesn’t want to think about what he must look like but the image is branded into his head, all those gold rings and the horrifying black seed soaking his thighs, his sex, the ground beneath him. His gaping cunt and collapsed-open legs, spread wide for the court.

If the Anzakswarjet had commissioned a portrait, if they’d _bred_ him, they couldn’t have gotten closer to the bitch-queen ideal than he is now.

“Lovely,” Sorath murmurs as Jace cries. “Very lovely, but do not hide yourself from us, treasure.”

The rings pull at him, tug his arms away from his face like a puppet’s limbs, raise his head up from the floor.

“Always, you give us diamonds,” the prince says softly, and the approval in its voice…something broken-breaking in Jace craves it, craves it _desperately_ , wants so badly to turn towards someone _(something)_ that says he isn’t a monster—but that’s why Sorath approves: because Jace _is_. “Do not be ashamed of what you are, _kunnarnatar_. You are beautiful. You are _ours.”_

Jace’s throat burns from the tentacles and his tears, but even if they didn’t he might not bother to protest. To plead. They won’t listen, and why should they, when his body belies every word he says, when every sobbing plea for mercy is shown up for a lie when his cunt swallows them down and demands more when they finish?

It wants more now. By the Angel _(and he shouldn’t even think that oath, no wonder Raziel ignored his prayers for freedom or death, he is no child of the Angel’s, Raziel would never sire a creature as depraved a slut as Jace. He must be the child of some darker force, spawned by some twisted evil thing, with no claim on the Angel’s love or notice at all)_ it wants, _he_ wants, he is crying still and through his tears comes the impulse to reach down and push his fingers inside himself, fuck himself through all the slick and demon leavings in front of all these hungry eyes, and he barely cares, he is a slut and a whore and he _wants_ —

He doesn’t do it. But he cries harder, because he wants to.

No one checks him for damage this time. He is still sobbing when two pairs of hands grasp his hips and waist and drag his lower body up off the floor, position him with his ass in the air and his cheek pressed against the cool, unforgiving stone, and he is so exhausted, he is so sore, every time the flush of endorphins wears off he remembers how sore he is. “No,” he sobs as a new organ probes at his cunt, rubs itself in the slick, sick mess between his legs, “please, _please…no…”_

It pushes into him anyway. His cunt doesn’t resist at all.

This one isn’t even a little bit human, nothing like a human’s cock in type or kind. It’s thin at the top but widens into a knob of hot flesh, like a flower bulb or an onion, balanced on a long, ribbon-slim stalk, and the bulb is smaller than an alpha’s knot but it still sets off fireworks between Jace’s legs as it slides neatly into him. Almost instantly it pushes deeper and deeper and Jace _hates_ it, it feels so incredibly unhuman, nothing holding him open, nothing stretching his lips, only a deep, heavy ache as the bulb works its way into his body. His cunt is designed for a knot just inside his entrance but this is a thick, solid weight where none should be, hard and unyielding and throbbing deep inside him like a bruise. An unhappy whine shoots directly from Jace’s hindbrain to his mouth, omega instinct overcoming even his revulsion, and Sorath—

The demon prince _growls_.

The sound reverberates through the cavern and it sounds like an alpha, a pissed-off alpha, and the demon embedded in Jace freezes like a rabbit but Jace moans, every twist of tension in his body melting open at the fierce, blazing sound. His cunt flutters around the demon’s member, signals mixed, wires crossed, trying to soothe and calm the angry alpha by milking its knot just right—

 “Do not,” Sorath says, and its wings make a heavy sound as they flare out wide from the gleaming black throne, “hurt it more than you must.”

The only sound in the room is the wet, slick sounds Jace’s count makes as it squeezes and contracts around the demon.

“Yesssss, _[Hive-Heart],”_ the demon ( _palvelija_ caste, fourth from the bottom) hisses, and Jace is panting, with discomfort and arousal and fear _(what is this, what is he doing, what did he just do, his instincts read Sorath’s anger as a mate’s WHY)_ , and he shivers as the demon pets him gently. “Thiss one is mosst sssorry.”

Why does the prince care, it didn’t before—they’re _all_ hurting him, _Sorath_ is hurting him, he’s been in pain of every kind since this started, does it think this is some kind of mercy? It isn’t, it isn’t, if it wants to take care of him why won’t they let him _go_ —

And yet even as he thinks that, even as new tears gather in his eyes there’s a part of him purring, warmed by its mate’s concern—

_IT IS NOT MY MATE—_

But all his thoughts dissolve as his demon rapist carefully pulls its bulb into his shallower depths, until it’s seated just inside his entrance. And there, there—it rubs itself insidiously against the thousands of sensitive nerve-bundles just inside his lips, the pleasure-nodes that make the pressure of an alpha’s knot an instant addiction for any omega who feels it, and no, no, Jace moans helplessly at the incredible bliss building between his legs, defenceless against it. The demon pumps and thrusts, gently, gently, and Jace shakes his head, hating himself, hating hating hating as the bulb nuzzles every sweet-spot and his cunt flutters in response, trying to clamp down on a knot that isn’t there. It’s awful, it’s maddening, it flushes heat up through his chest until he’s panting, feverish, clawing at the floor and sobbing with shame and need with the ecstasy throbbing between his legs. The demon works up his nodes until they’re singing—and then abandons them, pushes deeper, not so deep as before but enough to leave his hot spots bereft.

Jace keens, pushes his hips back without thinking, pleading, but the demon ignores him; it thrusts back and forth, solid and deep as Jace’s cunt spasms, convulses, burning and desperate and the thing he wants is _right there_ , he needs it and it’s _right there_ and the pleasure eats at his brain like rot, devouring, destroying, he needs needs needs please, please, _“Please!”_

His cry echoes, he hears demons hiss and gasp and doesn’t care, doesn’t care because his mate is merciful, tugs its bulb back down, back where he needs it and Jace is sobbing with gratitude, with pleasure, boneless in the demon’s grip as it rocks inside him, twisting and probing every spot, every bundle of needy nerves, and Jace doesn’t even need the rings on his clit to come like a wild thing, come like he’s dying.  

It pulses like a bleeding heart as it fills him anew with demon seed.

They give him no chance to come down this time, no chance to remember himself and cry for the growing stain on his soul. The _palvelija_ caste demon pulls out of him, and Jace collapses again, but he barely hits the floor before there’s another one lifting him up, prying him open, pulling him onto its cock like he’s nothing but a doll of flesh, a hole to fuck. He moans as it fills him.

They blur together. He loses track. There is always something inside him, there is always something pushing him open, buried between his legs, fucking in and out of his cunt. Hard, ridged cocks and fleshy ones with pointed tips, blunt flared heads and those with bulges along their lengths like eggs—there are so many. They thrust and thrust until he comes, wringing his pleasure out of him, and then they screw their hips, or hump against him, growl or purr or howl as they spend inside him, fill his wet, used cunt with their seed. It drips out of him, gushes out of him, his body can’t hold it all but they don’t stop, they never stop. The moment one finishes the next cock is sliding into him, never leaving him empty for more than a second or two, pushing in while his cunt is still shuddering through its last orgasm. It never ends and he starts to think it never will, that his life is just this, the grunting and hissing and heaving, the thick fullness between his legs, the velvety caresses over his clit, the spurt of come and seed in his fleshlight body. That’s what the voice in his ears tells him, promises him.

His cunt is a molten thing, a sun embedded in flesh, pure need. He craves what they do to him even as he loses the strength to help them, grows so sensitive that he starts coming the moment they push into him, the moment they breach his hole. He shudders through his release and mewls weakly, hanging in their grasps, impaled on their thick organs; milking them, fluttering helplessly, blissfully around them. He comes over and over—and his cunt becomes looser and looser, opens wider and wider, the voice praises him for taking his mates so well but the sensation starts to dull inside, his body fucked so open and raw he can hardly feel the cocks inside him anymore.

And then, gradually, all he can feel is pain.

His sex still aches and needs and cries out for something his crumbling mind can’t name but it hurts, it _hurts_ , he wants so badly to be full but the sawing in his cunt is burning with every thrust. He starts to cry with exhaustion and pain, but quietly, because he does not expect anyone to care or even notice.

They do, though. Someone lifts his head with gentle claws, and the cock in him is still moving, still driving in and out of his sticky, gaping sex as they tip a familiar potion down his throat, rub his neck to make him swallow.

He falls unconscious to a lullaby of hoarse, lusty groans and the slap of flesh on flesh, the slick squelching between his legs.

*

He wakes mid-orgasm, waves of bliss breaking through his body like a summer storm, shuddering and convulsing and whimpering in his sleep. He wakes to the thick pistoning in his cunt, a thick, smooth organ embedded in his softness and another between his thighs, rutting against his clit—this demon has _two_ cocks, and Jace’s sex squeezes greedily at the realisation, wanting both, wanting to demand why he doesn’t have both of them inside him.

Then he wakes up a little more, and the horror takes him like a riptide.

He is himself again, and his cunt is still open wide but healed, not hurting, sucking and drooling slick and seed around the hard organ buried in him, fucking him. He has no idea what kind of demon is taking him, what caste his gangrape has reached, but the bruises are gone, his throat doesn’t burn, his body is flushed with new energy, and he feels so full, sick and heavy and sloshing a little with every pounding thrust. When he gets a trembling hand on his belly he starts to cry, because the skin there is stretched thin and tight, distended with load after load of demonic ejaculate.

They didn’t stop while he was asleep. They _didn’t stop_.

Suddenly the demon pulls out sharply, and Jace’s hips jerk. Before he can even gasp he’s being flipped over and set on his back on the floor, and the gold rings pull his legs wide apart as the demon—a pale leathery blue, long elongated head and bony ridges running down its back—mounts him again and drives back into him without pause. Jace cries out with shock and shocked pleasure, shoved full of thick hardness, helplessly caught beneath the demon’s body as it snaps powerful hips. The cock inside is the one that was rubbing against his clit; the other, slick with his juices and the leavings of earlier demons, slides down between the cheeks of his ass. It ruts there with every thrust, rubbing and rubbing and Jace sobs, _no_ , shakes his head desperately as he feels another orgasm start to build between his legs, pleasure twisting higher with every movement of the demon’s hips. No, he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to be this, please don’t, please stop, please don’t make him—

It’s useless, pointless. He comes again, convulsing around the thick rod holding him open, and he’s still keening with unwilling pleasure when the demon guides its second cock into his second hole.

Jace cries out, horror-fear as the blunt head pushes insistently, inexorably; he tries to scramble away from it but the rings hold him in place on the floor, his legs held open invitingly wide, and it _hurts_ , the ring of muscle is forced open and it hurts—but not as much as it probably should. The tears come again and Jace cries at the sensation, the thick, heavy meat screwing cruelly into his ass, lubed with his own wetness, with the leavings of all the rapes before this. He feels stretched to the breaking point and he can’t even writhe, can’t twist his hips without sending fire blazing up his spine, it hurts but his cunt is still purring with the aftershocks of his release and the pain and pleasure mixes together like sweet poison.

The demon gives him no time to adjust before continuing to fuck him, and it is not gentle. Its terrible cocks slam _in_ and _out_ and _in_ and _out_ and Jace can feel them rubbing together through the thin membranes separating the two passages inside him, hot and thick and overwhelming. He can do nothing, he can only be impaled, can only take it and sob and feel and know that this is not the first time. It should hurt more than this, so much more, and it doesn’t. This is not the first time they’ve fucked his other hole; the potion must have healed the pain but left him open for them, so they could do _this_ to him, fuck and fuck and fuck him until all he can feel is cock, all he can feel is fullness, all that exists is the pounding thrusts between his legs—

He comes again, of course. Screaming, with pleasure and pain and despair, rippling and clenching around each cock like he can’t get enough. The demon hisses and spends itself in his slut-holes, his whore-gates; its organs twitch and spasm inside Jace and spurt black seed between his thighs, the demon screwing itself in just a tiny bit deeper as it comes.

A wave of fluids leave his holes as it withdraws. It leaves him there, sobbing with shame, leaking oily demon leavings from between his spread legs.

How many? How many has there been? How many raped him while he was unconscious, and how many of those did he come for? He imagines it, his body slack and sleeping and still shuddering with release as he hangs from countless, monstrous cocks, a slut even in his sleep.

 _Kunnarnatar_ bitch-queen. Made for this, born for this. Hell’s Whore.

He’s still crying when the next climbs on top of him and pushes into his dripping sex, indifferent to—or maybe even aroused by—his tears.

They move him around now, like a doll for their pleasure. The fat, blubbery creature heaves above him, splitting him open on its thick, knobbly organ, rutting into him like a pig; the next turns him over and doesn’t touch his cunt at all, slides into his second hole and rocks in and out of him like a metronome until Jace’s sex is on fire with need, screaming for attention. It leaves him like that, shaking, vibrating with the need for release; and when the next demon—a Vetis, like the one at the club so long ago—pushes its eel-headed hand into his cunt, letting it squirm and lick and pump itself into him, Jace screams as he comes.

The Vetis laughs, and mounts him, shoving its cock into his cunt while it’s still rippling with pleasure. It holds its arms so one eel can tongue-fuck Jace’s slack mouth and the other can swallow his clit, licking and suckling on him, drinking him down as he’s fucked.

He comes in its mouth, tears streaming down his face.

He can’t remember what caste a Vetis demon is. He doesn’t know how many are left. He doesn’t know if this is ever going to end.

The next demon is covered in hard black scales like ridges of armour, like some kind of humanoid insect. It sits back on the floor and lifts Jace into its lap, ignoring the gush of seed that spills from his cunt at the pull of gravity. Jace sobs, disgusted and humiliated, his clit still wet with eel spit as the demon positions him above its long, chitinous organ. It doesn’t even need to pull him down, only guide his hips as the pointed tip breaches him, as he sinks down the hard black rod all on his own, slick and easy.

He whimpers as he settles against its hips, full in a way no other position has managed up till now. It aches like a bruise, and he leans against the demon’s chest, resigned, still crying quietly. There’s no point in fighting, he can’t—

He yelps as the demon slaps his ass; the burst of short pain makes him jerk over its cock, and he shudders, clenching around it instinctively. What—what—?

“Move those hips, little bitch,” the demon growls. “Ride me. The others might let you be lazy, but I won’t.” When Jace doesn’t move, stunned, it flicks his clit; the sharp jolt makes him cry out, as much with disbelief as hurt, and his hips rock to get away from it. The demon’s growl becomes a low, rumbling purr. “That’s it, treasure, just like that. Again.”

Slowly, trembling, Jace does as he’s told. The rings don’t help him this time and he has to grasp at the demon’s shoulder ridges to get enough leverage, but he starts to roll his hips, tentatively, shaking with disgust and shame. The sting in his clit melts into a hot, bad-good throb of sensation and he leaks seed around the demon’s cock with every motion, every rock of his hips; every thrust squelches sickeningly, wet and dirty, and he’s burningly aware of all the demons watching. He can almost feel the prince’s eyes on his ass, watching the black organ slide in and out of his cunt as Jace fucks himself on it, shallow, uncertain thrusts. The rings on his clit clink softly against the demon’s bone-hard armour as Jace moves up and down, up and down, clawing himself up and trying not to fall too hard as he sinks back against the demon’s hips.

The demon’s cock is as ridged as its armour, and Jace trembles harder as the bumps and whorls rub against his inner walls, stroking in and out of him, torturing his softness. He whimpers as the smouldering heat between his thighs builds up yet again, stoked by his own thrusts. He’s doing this to _himself_ this time, not being fucked but doing the fucking, screwing himself open on a demon’s breeding organ for everyone to see, and he can feel his hips moving harder, can hear the wet noises his cunt is making getting louder, losing himself to the awful, shameful pleasure of it. He cries and wants to stop and doesn’t, and when the demon’s fingers reach down to toy with his stretched-open lips—stroking and teasing the place where their bodies join, slick with Jace’s wetness, and Jace sobs with the shame of it and snaps his hips harder, driving himself open on its cock—

He is not surprised when he comes. It’s a given, now. But the demon does not, and when Jace’s hips stop moving, stunned and shaking with the aftershocks, it swats his ass again, jerks him back to his task. “You think you’re done when you’ve had your pleasure, little bitch? You’re not finished until I say so. Now get back to work.”

Jace comes twice more before the demon counts itself satisfied, holding him down against the base of its cock as it finally, finally spills inside him. Jace is crying with relief, his every muscle trembling with the strain of holding himself upright, fucking himself on its insatiable cock; it pets him approvingly and leaves him leaking on the floor, its sly fingers pinching his clit as it abandons him to the next demon.

The next demon actually being a pair of them, Geminus demons, one of the shapeshifter breeds that exist as psychic twins. They look like stretched-out humans, long and slender, with too-big eyes and feathers and thorns for hair, claws like stone splinters. They hold his legs open on the floor and lick him out like kittens sharing a bowl of milk, and Jace struggles weakly against their hold but needn’t bother, their grips are like steel. He shivers, disgusted as they lap at his cunt, their tongues twisting together inside him, slipping and sliding, their heads moving together between his thighs like they’re feeding on him. They lick and lap until he’s shaking, until his hips rock helplessly against their mouths, until he’s mewling for it, for more. They bring him over the edge with just their tongues, and while he’s still gasping they lift him up—onto them _both_. They kneel facing each other with his body between theirs like a toy, and lower him onto both their cocks at once, watching him hungrily, their faces smeared black with the seed they licked out of him. He’s so fucked-out it barely hurts, just an aching twinge as he slides down onto them, his cunt stretched and full to brimming, but he can’t believe it, squirms and twists his hips, sobbing _no_ as they take him, fill him, _fuck_ him like that—

He loses count of how many times he comes, feeling them rub and slide together inside his cunt, knot-thick all along their combined length. At some point he passes out, still held between them, his head lolling against their shoulders as they screw their hips hard against his, battering him, their little toy of flesh—

He comes to with another demon sliding into his barely-conscious body, and there’s no telling how many have fucked him in the interim, his cunt is still singing with an orgasm he doesn’t remember, wasn’t awake for.

How many? How many left?

He tries to count. Loses track. Comes, over and over. Hell’s Whore. Bitch-queen. He cries, he sobs, he moans, he begs. Sometimes he screams. He lapses in and out of consciousness and they never stop fucking him, pushing him open, forcing him full and using his holes like this is what he’s meant for, a living fleshlight, a scrap of meat for them to sheath their cocks in.

_(This **is** what he’s meant for.)_

Jace has lost all track of time when the rhino-like monster above him snaps its hips against his one last time and grunts, flooding his cunt with its seed. It pulls out of him and Jace is left twitching on the ground, every nerve swollen with depraved pleasure, his cunt convulsing with spasmodic need, leaking black, oily ejaculate over the floor and waiting for the next one.

But the next one doesn’t come.

“Enough.” The demon prince’s voice cuts through the room, penetrates if not unmakes the haze of despair and craving clouding Jace’s mind. “The bitch is all but bound, Anzakswarjet. Our claim spills forth from between its thighs like the river Gihon. You have opened it, Anzakswarjet! You have opened our _kunnarnatar_ , unlocked our treasure. Cry your triumph!”

They do. It is a wave of sound crashing through the cavern, howls and shrieks and roars, and Jace lies helplessly on the floor beneath the onslaught, panting, ashamed. Him. They mean _him_. Opened, unlocked, flooded with their seed.

He whimpers, very softly.

“I will complete the binding in my _[private space/nest/chambers],”_ Sorath says, when the uproar has died down. “Celebrate, Anzakswarjet. Our _[hive/court]_ has its _[breeder of Hive-Hearts]_!”

There is another roar. Then more noise, an eruption of it. The demons celebrating, presumably. Jace does not have the energy to turn his head and see what they’re doing; it sounds like they’re tearing each other apart. Maybe the sight and sound and smell of their prince’s bitch-queen getting gang-raped has aroused them all, maybe their celebration will be a bloody orgy.

His cunt clenches around nothing, empty, hungry.

A shadow covers him like a blanket, and when he peers up it’s into the face of the demon prince, the one who’s orchestrated all of this. The one who’s turned Jace into this. Or: shown him what he really is. It’s hard to tell the difference, hard to remember.

Sorath bends down and scoops him up like a kitten. The tentacles of its hair curl and coil over Jace’s body, slithering, clasping him. One, two, three slip easily between his legs, nuzzling into his cunt and pumping gently, stroking his insides; Jace mewls with gratitude _(not empty. Not empty.)_ and another takes the chance to slide between his lips, over his tongue.

He hangs limp in Sorath’s arms, in the tangle of its hair, as the tentacles between his legs twist and thrust, as the one in his mouth throbs and pulses. Something bittersweet spurts from the tip, and it is already sliding down his throat before he can question what it is.

“Good, treasure,” the prince purrs. “Very good,” and the tentacles are still softly fucking him when everything goes dark again.

*

He wakes up lying on something soft.

For a moment, he keeps his eyes closed and stays still, just breathing. The pains—the bruises, the rawness in his sex, the battered joints—are gone. He can think, can remember, and his cunt aches fiercely but that could be a (messed-up) response to a wet dream.

Maybe none of it was real. Maybe he’s lying on his bed right now. He’ll open his eyes and be back at the Institute—he’ll never have left.

He wishes for it so hard he can’t breathe, and then he opens his eyes.

The disappointment is total, crushing. This is not his room, it is not the Institute—he doubts there is any place like it on Earth. He is in a small, round, windowless cave lit with glowing fungi and torches burning with black and red flames. The floor is packed with furs and skins, heaps and piles of them in every direction; Jace is lying on one such mound, raised up from the floor on furs striped and spotted and shimmering. There is no furniture, nothing but the piles of softness gathered into a giant nest.

Jace starts to cry. Softly, weakly, helplessly. This isn’t home. He’s never going home. He is exhausted, and broken, and he is never, ever going home.

They wouldn’t take him back even if they could. Not after what he’s done. What he’s _become_.

“It’s awake,” a familiar voice says, and Jace twists onto his back in a sharp bolt of panic, scrabbling in the furs to push himself upright. He’s sitting up and trying to scramble backwards when the rings pull him down into the softness, drag him forward towards the edge of the nest-mound.

Towards _Tenebra_.

“No,” Jace whispers when he sees the thick, hideous arousal hanging heavy beneath the spider-demon’s body, _“no_ , please, _please_ , I can’t, I can’t take anym-more—” The words break into sobs, desperate, exhausted, heaving sobs as the rings spread his legs wide, open and inviting _(as if he can ever look inviting again, fucked-out and fucked-full, sloppy with the fluids of almost two dozen different demons, the world’s most disgusting whore)_. “Leave me _alone_ , I _can’t_ , I can’t, _p-please_ —”

And Sorath is there, curling around him to block off Jace’s escape route, block out everything but the view of Tenebra’s anticipatory smirk and its horrible, nightmarish cock. The prince’s diamond-clawed hand strokes soothingly down Jace’s chest, and it croons, low and unearthly in its throat. “You can, treasure, you’re almost done, just a little more now. Sheath Tenebra, and you will be ready to sheath me.”

“I don’t _want_ to sheath you!” Jace cries through his tears. “I want to go _home_ , please just let me go home, I can’t, I can’t, I _can’t_ …”

They don’t care. Sorath curls its fingers around the gold bracelets on Jace’s wrists, as if the rings themselves aren’t enough to hold Jace pinned, and shoves its hair-tentacles into Jace’s mouth, turning his sobs into a choked noise. The soft ebony tendrils fuck his mouth, teasing the entrance of his throat, and Jace’s weak, hopeless cries are muffled by the writhing mass of flesh, practically inaudible—and even if it wasn’t, who would hear or care or come to rescue him?

The pile of furs is at just the right height for Tenebra, Jace is positioned like a virgin on an altar _(what a joke, what a sick joke that is)_ and his cunt is spread wide as if for inspection or breeding _(both)_ , filthy with black seed. The shame is vicious, he desperately wants to curl up and hide the evidence of his whoredom but the rings won’t let him, Sorath won’t let him, and Tenebra is eyeing him like something to eat as it comes closer, closer. Jace watches helplessly, sobbing into the mass of tentacles in his mouth. He can’t fight, can’t struggle, even without the rings he just doesn’t have the strength anymore and his body goes limp with despair, tears trickling down the sides of his face as Tenebra climbs over him, its dark, horrific organ swaying under its belly as it settles into position over him.

It lowers itself down slowly, but instead of driving into him right away the demon drags the length of its cock over Jace’s belly and torso and Jace shudders, whimpering into the tentacles with disgusted horror. Tenebra’s organ is _heavy_ , a thick slab of meat bristling with hair-fine, flexible spines, and he can hear the demon purring as it ruts slowly against him, rubbing off against his helpless body. The spines look like needles but don’t pierce his skin, they bend and give like rubber or stiff elastic and the brush of them is horrible, it’s too easy to imagine what they’ll feel like inside him, the friction, a thousand cruel-sweet caresses against his inner walls and this is going to be inside him, Tenebra is going to sheath itself in him and all Jace can do is cry as he waits for it, dreading it—

“Do not tease us, _[lover-consort],”_ Sorath says huskily, even as a few of its tentacles squirm over Jace’s body to stroke Tenebra’s organ. The spider-demon hisses with pleasure; its meat jerks against Jace’s abdomen, drooling foul grey fluid from its pointed tip. “I want to see the bitch stuffed full of your phallus…”

Another tentacle slithers down Jace’s side and around his held-wide thighs. It squirms into his cunt without warning and Jace arches, eyes shooting wide at the burst of unexpected pleasure; his sex is crying out, begging for mercy, for something to plug it full at last, and he moans helplessly as Sorath toys with him, plunging shallowly in and out of his slick, wet cunt.

“…And I think it wants that as well,” the prince purrs. The tentacle twists slowly, thickly, and Jace gives another muffled moan, tries to shake his head in denial and can’t. “Do you not hear it crying out for you, Tenebra? Have pity on the poor creature.”

“As my lord commands,” Tenebra says, amused and hungry. It shifts, dragging its cock along and off Jace’s stomach, its spines brushing his clit, which throbs and twitches under the attention, and Jace sobs as the tentacle between his legs withdraws—only for another to join it, the two slipping and sliding over the lips of Jace’s cunt, prying at him, holding him open as Tenebra readies itself, the head of its monstrous organ brushing Jace’s thigh, his groin—

Another of Sorath’s tentacles curls around the head of its lover’s cock and tugs it helpfully against Jace’s cunt, guiding it into place, and Jace cries as it nudges him, as the terrible mass of the spider-demon’s body moves above him and its cock pushes, pushes—

And then it’s sliding in, Tenebra’s groan of pleasure reverberating in Jace’s ears as his cunt opens for it, gives way meekly before the thick meat and it’s so much, it fills him so much, pain skitters from his stretched lips but oh God, oh _God_ , Jace wants to writhe with the shattering intensity of the sensation and can hardly breathe and it’s not even halfway in him yet, it’s still coming, Tenebra is still feeding it into his hungry, slutty cunt. The spider-demon moves carefully above him, pushing in slowly and steadily, inexorably, there’s no escape from this, it’s filling every inch of him, pressing against his lungs and heart and brain and he can’t think, nothing exists but the needle-wreathed cock sheathing itself between his drenched thighs, the waves and waves of pleasure-pain making him sick and dizzy and drunk. He is only this, only a container for this, and the bliss and despair of that thought threatens to shake him apart—

_I want to go home—_

It feels like years before the hard carapace of Tenebra’s body presses against Jace’s cunt, signalling that the entire length of its organ is now embedded between his legs, and Jace trembles with the fullness. He can feel it throbbing inside him, the spines twitching and flexing, stroking him like silky claws, and tears spill down his face even as he moans again, hating himself, unable not to.

It fucks him then. Slowly at first, its spines combing his cunt with sharp, nauseating pleasure as it draws out, pulls half its length from Jace’s soaked cunt—and then feeds it back to him, so slowly it might be sweet if it wasn’t so horrifically obscene. The spider-demon rocks above him, swaying back and forth on its powerful legs and Jace is helpless to stop it, to do anything but weep and moan, a living sex-doll, all he can do is lie there as its cock thrusts in and out of his spent flesh, as it savours the hot, wet hole he provides it. Sorath’s tentacles stop holding him open—it’s no longer necessary, not stretched so raw and wide around Tenebra’s thickness—and instead rub against the lips of his sex, sliding through the slickness there, teasing the ring of straining flesh sealed tight by Tenebra’s cock. It makes Jace whimper unhappily, trying to flinch away from the touch, but the rings hold him pinned for their pleasure as if the gold is soldered around his bones.

“So lovely,” Sorath murmurs as Tenebra’s thrusts grow faster, a touch harder. “Look at the two of you joined—beautiful.” The hunger is raw in its voice as it lets go of Jace’s wrists to stroke a hand down Jace’s body, to where Tenebra’s cock bulges visibly through Jace’s belly, distending Sorath’s Mark with every thrust; it fondles Tenebra through Jace’s skin and both omega and spider-demon moan aloud. Tenebra snaps harder into Jace in response, and Jace keens with pleasure-pain. “I think I will do this often,” the prince purrs, and it does it again, slowly masturbating Tenebra through Jace’s body and the shame of it, being so _used_ , makes Jace sob even as Tenebra snarls, the sound somehow desperate. “Have the two of you join for my pleasure. Perhaps I will even leave the treasure hanging on your phallus, Tenebra, until I want it—leave it harnessed beneath you, ever-open and -ready for me. Would that please you?”

“Very much, my prince,” Tenebra gasps, and Jace groans _“no, **no** ,”_ around the tentacles fucking his mouth but no one is asking him, and the spider-demon is all but slamming in and out of him now, clearly aroused by the picture Sorath is painting. Jace wants to wail with the sharp, blazing heat between his legs, climbing higher and higher with every rocking slide of Tenebra’s body, and his mouth is stretched so wide drool is dripping down his chin and cheeks. “I would take—good care of it for you.”

“I do not doubt it,” Sorath purrs. The demon prince curls close to Jace’s helpless, fleshlight body and it is still stroking Tenebra’s cock through him, its palm moving up and down, back and forth. “And will you guard it thus when it is swollen with my clutch, Tenebra? Will you hold it impaled on your phallus while it is heavy with my young, carry it sheathed upon you so the whole _[hive-court]_ can see my _[lover-consort]_ and my breeder joined for me?”

“Yes!” Tenebra gasps, fervent and frantic. “Yes, my prince, yes!”

 _No!_ Jace sobs silently. _Please, no!_ But his cunt is indifferent to the horror, thinks of rocking back and forth on those silken spines while swollen with pregnancy for everyone to see, full of his mate’s young _(not my mate, **not my mate**!)_ and never having to be empty again, and Tenebra is thrusting, thrusting, the slick wet sounds of Jace’s cunt taking it—

Suddenly his hand moves without his will—the rings guide it down, glittering gold on his wrists and finger joints, and Sorath is nuzzling Jace’s ear, crooning in a way that makes Jace shudder, spills honey-heat down his spine and between his legs to suckle at Tenebra’s cock. Jace whimpers, and then his hand is on his own stomach, fingers brushing Sorath’s claws as the thick bulge of Tenebra’s length pushes against his palm through his skin.

“Stroke jer, treasure,” the prince purrs, and Jace has no choice, the rings guide his hand, make his fingers dig in a little around the thick organ and he is stroking it and sobbing as it throbs against his palm, through his skin, the spider-demon above him groans and its pleasure makes Jace sick. He is so full, his skin is stretched tight and thin around the unstoppable slide of Tenebra’s cock in and out, thrusting into his cunt and his hand as he pets it, grasps it, jerks it off through his belly and he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t but he can’t stop— “Pleasure jer phallus, worship it, sheath it all inside you—so beautiful, such a good bitch for me, treasure, just a little more, a little more and it will be our turn.”

The rings caress his clit, fondling and squeezing and Jace cries out around the tentacles pumping into his mouth, and Tenebra snarls again as Jace’s cunt clamps and flutters around its cock, massaging, milking, desperate. _Our turn_ and he sobs, thinking of it, craving it and dreading it, his mate finally mounting him, fucking him, breeding him, it terrifies him and douses oil on his body’s fire and he is so full, he is shaking, the demon’s organ is jerking and twitching beneath his hand and between his legs and Sorath whispers in his ear, “I will give you so many clutches, _kunnarnatar,”_ and Jace gives a muffled wail and comes, comes apart, shattering like glass.

His cunt spasms, clamping and rippling and Sorath keeps his hand moving, masturbating Tenebra frantically as he comes and comes and the spider-demon lets out a choked howl as it spends into Jace’s convulsing sex, slamming its full length into him. The cock jerks inside his stretched-out flesh and _floods_ him with its seed, tides of it filling him to overflowing—so much it forces its way out past the thick meat plugging him, trickles and drips out of Jace’s sex even as Tenebra is still coming inside him.

Jace groans with something too close to pain when the spider-demon eventually slides its softening cock out from between his legs. The slick, sucking noise his cunt makes as it’s emptied barely elicits a twinge of shame and cringing disgust; he can’t comprehend it, can’t process it, crying and battered and awash with torturous pleasure. The aftershocks pulse and ripple through his body and he feels like a steak, beaten and tenderised and ready to be devoured; Tenebra’s leavings are leaking over his thighs, trickling down his ass and making a mess of the furs beneath him. He is so exhausted, hollowed out—all he is is hollowness, emptiness, a human-shaped ache. A human-shaped _hole_ , a hole for cock, a living sheath, and he is crying weakly as the tentacles gently slide out of his throat, his mouth.

They push into his cunt instead and Jace can’t find the energy to protest, to do more than moan, helpless and so tired as they slip and slide into him, squelching, slithering. He clenches around them without thinking, weakly, exhausted but desperate; he aches so much, his cunt has been stoked like a fire by dozens of fingers, tongues, cocks for hours and _hours_ and he can’t take the emptiness, he can’t take the need. He needs it to stop. He needs to be full, and he cries harder because he knows they were right, they were right about him all along. They’ll breed him and there’s nothing he can do and the tentacles are pumping gently between his legs, squirming in deeper and deeper and he wants to go home, he wants it to _stop_.

Maybe they’ll never make it stop. Maybe they’ll never give him a knot, maybe they’ll let him burn and burn forever, let him crawl and cry and beg for relief from the slutty black hole between his legs and never give it to him, just laugh at the prince’s whore as he climbs into their laps and fucks himself on anything they’ll give him, frantic, crying for it—

Tenebra moves away, its soft cock swaying beneath its body—and the demon prince crawls into its place. Its tentacles withdraw from Jace’s cunt with slick noises and Jace whimpers at the loss, dread and blind, pleading need tangling together in his head, in the pit of his stomach.

_Our turn…_

“At last,” Sorath says hoarsely, and Jace just stares miserably at it, tears trickling down his cheeks. He knows there’s no use fighting this, or trying to. He can’t fight Sorath. He can’t fight his own body. His fate was sealed the moment he was dragged through the Hellmouth—maybe even the moment he was born. “Tenebra made you the _[hive-court]_ ’s, _kunnarnatar_ —and now I will make you mine. I will make you the _[gestator]_ of my _[royal-caste young].”_ Its hand goes to its hip, to the clasp of black opal and steel that holds its skirt in place, and unfastens it—

And as the black fabric falls to the piles of fur, Jace sees the demon prince’s generative organ for the first time.

If he had the energy to scream, he would scream at the sight.

At a glance it is a little thicker even than Tenebra’s and almost twice as long, human in basic shape but engorged, swollen to obscenity, dark and ugly and monstrous. But what makes Jace sob are the dozens and dozens of small, worm-like tentacles growing from its heavy length, squirming and writhing like—like worms, just like worms, black and wriggling with sick eagerness to get inside him, and no, no, not this, please not this, not inside him, please not this…!

One of Tenebra’s hands strokes Jace’s sweaty, soaked hair. “Do you weep with the glory?” it asks, a low, crooning purr. “Or with anticipation? You cannot yet imagine the pleasure a _[Hive-Heart]_ ’s _[generative organ]_ can give, little bitch-queen. Rejoice, for you are about to learn…”

“No,” Jace whispers, crying, “no, no…” But the demon prince’s ebony hair slithers across the nest, the furs, a cloud of silken ropes that coil up and over his body, binding and enfolding, clasping and caressing his naked, gold-glittering flesh. Tentacles slip between his legs and lips, fondle his clit and nipples and second hole as they lift him into the air, cocooned in serpentine flesh. His legs are spread but completely encased in black, only his dripping, vulnerable cunt left uncovered but stuffed full of pumping, twisting tentacles as he’s drawn towards the demon prince, under the shadow of its enormous wings. Jace hangs limp in its grip, shuddering with unwilling pleasure and despairing horror, crying weakly, helplessly, pulled hungrily against the prince’s body.

The tentacles slip out from between his thighs, one by one, and when the last one leaves him the cocoon sways him a little lower down Sorath’s body, and he feels it: the brush of much smaller, even more grotesque tentacles against the lips of his cunt. Worms, maggots, wriggling little cords of flesh and if he weren’t so exhausted the touch of them would make him throw up as they stroke and pry at the lips of his hole, and the prince is pushing Jace’s tangle downwards, or maybe pushing its hips forward, there’s no way to tell but the squirming, sick mass is pressing against Jace’s cunt, holding him open for the main trunk of flesh and he is crying, he is sobbing as finally, finally his mate enters him.

Every moment of his life has been leading to this moment.

It’s so gentle. It goes on forever. It is what feels like a hundred slick, worming tendrils stroking and tasting and squirming and the nausea is a weak, pathetic thing, it cannot overcome the overwhelming misery, the despair, the hopelessness. His stomach judders but he is too weak to be sick, too weak to do anything but cry as a demon prince, _the_ demon prince slides into his cunt on the leavings of its court, taking him, claiming him. Every cock before this was only preparing him for this one, training him for this one, shaping him for this one; they opened him, emptied him and now Sorath is filling him. There’s no denying it, no pretending it away: the prince’s name is stamped on his womb, its collar unyielding around his throat, its tentacles enfold every inch of him and now, now its cock is thick and heavy inside him, stuffing him full, permeating every inch of him. It sheaths itself in the wet, welcoming warmth of his body and Jace can only let it, can only hang helpless and shuddering as it draws him down, his eyes rolling back in his head at the pressure, the immensity, the solid heat and the unhuman writhing, his cunt is singing satanic hymns of praise and it is still going, still slowly sliding into him—

“That’s it, treasure, that’s it,” the prince croons, and Jace moans with his mate’s approval, unable to vocalise anything else, his whole body is burning, is screaming, he is full of unnatural, squirming worms that feel so wrong and so mind-meltingly right. “You can take me now, you can take it all… Open up for me, treasure, give yourself to me…”

He can give nothing, Sorath is taking it all, and Jace whimpers but the worms are caressing every inch of his inner walls, slick and writhing and awful and so good, so good. The prince is still feeding its length into him, bit by bit, and Jace can’t see how much is left to go and doesn’t know if he cares. There’s no use resisting this. This is his life now, this is everything, the whole world narrows down to the feeling of Sorath’s phallus inside him and that’s all there is, all there will ever be, his cunt taking it and taking it, sheathing and pleasuring his mate, his only purpose to warm this horrific-incredible cock—

The tendrils at the tip of the prince’s organ find something inside him that makes even Jace’s slack body jerk unhappily, but that doesn’t stop them. They push and pry at something and their efforts throb like a bruise, ache uncomfortably, and Jace whines, tries to twist his hips away from the pressure. His cervix, he realises dimly, it’s prying at his cervix—

But the tentacles only hold him tighter and inside the tendrils worm in through the tiny opening in him, he groans with pain but his mate doesn’t care. The slick worms grasp and pluck at the ring of muscle, and they—

They _prise him open_ —

Jace sobs, struggling weakly, appalled, no, oh no, it _hurts_ and the head of the demon’s maggot-wreathed cock pushes through the new hole it’s made in him—

Jace comes more from pain than pleasure, hit without warning like a bullet to the brain. His orgasm is a depraved, twisted thing, bruised and sick and short, like the crack of a whip, like being burned, and when it’s over Sorath’s cock is still going, the worms slithering against Jace’s cervix as they pass it and the demon is in his womb, it’s in his _womb_ , it aches and aches and Jace can’t even fight it, he’s only a sheath, only a breeding hole, he can’t do anything but feel it happen, feel the prince own him more thoroughly than he ever thought possible. His cunt keeps clenching and clenching around the immense length filling up every drop of emptiness and still carving new space for itself, reshaping Jace’s body into a receptacle just for this. Carving him to fit.

The blade he was born to sheath.

“Good, _kunnarnatar_ , good,” the demon prince croons over Jace’s whimpers and weak, soft sobs. Its tentacles drag him further and further down its length, inexorably fucking his womb onto its cock. It pets him, fondles him like a toy, the black ropes of its hair pumping his clit, toying with his second hole. The slip and slide of its tentacles around his body flips animal switches in his brain; their dry slithering over his skin whispers that he belongs here, this is what he’s for, born and bred for Hell. His other life was a lie, a dream. The only thing that is real is this, the throbbing, squirming mass sheathed between his legs.

At last, Sorath’s groin meets Jace’s. The demon pauses there, holds him there and Jace shakes and shakes and shakes within his cocoon-cage, helpless and full to bursting. He has never been so full, never imagined that he could be. He has never felt less like a human being, less like a person; impaled on the prince like a scrap of flesh, a warm hole to keep its cock in, he can’t think of anything else but the meat throbbing and squirming between his thighs, buried and embedded in him.

Whore. Hell’s Whore. _Kunnarnatar_ bitch-queen breeder.

Breeding him. It’s going to breed him. Fuck him like a toy and plant its clutch in his broken-open womb, and Jace sobs, turning his face away from the iridescent whiteness of Sorath’s chest. He can’t stop it. This is all he is, all he’s good for, but he weeps to know it.

He is never going home. This is where he belongs.

“There,” the prince whispers, murmurs, and the triumph in its voice spins down Jace’s spine, makes his cunt clench reflexively around the impossible meat plugging him up. “My good, beautiful treasure. You took your master so well.” It rolls its hips testingly, and Jace moans, overwhelmed by the rocking pressure, the writhing friction. He is full of maggots and his cunt is drooling for them, convulsing around them. “Now milk me, little bitch, milk your master with your _[breeding hole]_.”

Slowly, so impossibly slowly, the prince starts to fuck him. The tangle of tentacles holding Jace trapped sways back and forth, and he moans weakly at the slight, shallow slide between his legs, in and out of his stretched-full cunt. The worms squirm against the lips of his holes, inside and out—his cunt and his cervix both, stroking and fondling each as they rub in and out and Jace thinks of being swollen and heavy, thinks with white-hot terror of the birth, but it’s not enough to kill the swelling bliss between his thighs, depraved but so sweet, so good. He doesn’t want to like it and he doesn’t, he loves it, he does, the sick writhing inside him is a thousand wriggling caresses and it is wrong wrong wrong but he has no choice, no choice but to take it. His cunt sucks hungrily at his mate’s cock _(milking it)_ and he is nothing but this, a toy swinging back and forth over a demon’s phallus, a warm, slutty fleshlight and the throb of his abused cervix spins itself into something sick, something obscene, a rich, rotten kind of pleasure that sets off stars behind Jace’s eyes, choking in his throat, he can do nothing, he is nothing, he is jerking Sorath off with his hole and his womb and he moans through his tears—

“That’s it, little bitch, milk me, suckle me with your _[breeding hole],”_ the prince hisses, and the tentacles swing Jace harder and harder onto its cock, a slick, writhing mass buried in his flesh, squirming over his cunt and knot-nodes and cervix and Jace can hardly breathe. “You are mine, _kunnarnatar_ , Sammael left you in Raziel’s nest but xe stole you back and gave you to me, and I will use you as xe intended, little bitch, I will use you as your body cries out to be used—you will never be empty again, treasure, I will fill you with my clutch and when you have borne them I will mount you there in the birthing nest, sire the next while the last look on—”

Jace’s head is spinning, his body is burning, he is drowning in profane pleasure and he is so full that if he opens his mouth, he is sure the prince’s organ will rise up through his throat, the worms will wriggle over his tongue and he will drool the demon’s seed from his slack lips. The words bind him like the rings of gold, like the writhing cloud of tentacles rocking his body for his mate’s pleasure, and he can’t resist them, the heavy meat between his legs holds him open body and mind and Sorath’s claims twist through Jace like DNA,  become immutable truth: yes, yes, he belongs to Sammael instead of Raziel, it must be so, any omega’s of Raziel’s would bleed and break around the immensity of a demon prince, could not contain it but Jace can, he slides tightly back and forth on Sorath’s organ and takes it all, his cunt embraces it, even his womb opens for it, welcomes it in—he is a monster and they have brought him to where the monsters are, where he belongs, in Hell and on a demon’s cock—

He cannot go home because he _is_ home—

A sobbing wail spills out of him like blood as he comes, hammered with the truth, hammered with his mate’s rapturous, monstrous organ over and over, again and again, he cannot writhe around it but his body clasps it, massages it, _milks_ the squirming, wriggling mass as it pounds between his legs and he can’t help it, can’t stop it, this is what he’s for, what he’s always been, his cunt and womb beg for his mate’s seed as he comes and above him Sorath roars and gives it to him. It is a flood, a tidal wave, jetting and coming directly into Jace’s womb, hot and thick and inescapable and his master’s seed, his mate’s, filling him up and breeding him and Jace comes again, gasping and crying and milking his mate’s cock, sucking and caressing it, it is everything, it is his world, it is planting his mate’s young in him, not a human litter but the clutch he was made to bear, born to birth.

It doesn’t stop. Jace shudders through his orgasms and Sorath is still coming, spurting and twitching inside him, spilling its fertilising fluid into his womb. It makes Jace come again, and again, weeping with pleasure and despair as his belly starts to distend with it, heavy and so full; the tentacles clasping him shift to make room and it’s almost as if he’s pregnant already, it almost looks like that, and the thought alone is enough to make Jace convulse with a fifth orgasm, the tendrils on his mate’s cock wriggling over his cervix and the lips of his cunt.

He can’t help it. He can’t. This is what he is.

The demon prince is still coming when the tentacles holding Jace softly slither and slide, shifting him. He is dizzy with the solid thickness still sheathed in him, still coming in him, drunk on seed and sex, and he only moans weakly as the tentacles carefully turn him around on Sorath’s cock, twisting him so his back is to the demon’s chest: the internal sensation is enough to make Jace come _again_ , shuddering and whimpering as the motion grinds him on his mate’s organ. The world is spinning—it is actually spinning, Sorath is lying down on its side in the nest of furs and Jace is still impaled on it, petted and caressed by tentacles as his mate still pumps its seed into his helpless, trembling body. The demon’s arm curls around the mass of tentacles as if to embrace him.

“Well done, treasure,” it purrs, somewhat hoarse. “You sheathed me so well, so beautifully. You should be proud; Sammael has given me a priceless gift in you.” Its hand reaches up to stroke his hair, and Jace moans softly again. “Now just lie still and let yourself be bred. Your body knows what to do now. Can you feel it drinking down my seed, treasure? How you ripple and purr around me. So eager for my clutch. So greedy.” Its voice is fond.

Mated and bred. Mated and bred. Jace comes again, helpless to resist it; the thought is a flare in his hindbrain, the sensation of his mate’s seed still flowing into him, flooding him so full there’s no chance he won’t catch and breed. And if he thinks he’s full now…in a few weeks, a few months, when he’s swollen with his mate’s young…

“Ah, yes,” Sorath murmurs as Jace trembles and mewls in its grasp, “you need a knot to seal your pleasure in, don’t you?”

And the worms, the tendrils on its cock, twist and squirm over the base of its organ to form a solid, larger-than-life knot for his slutty cunt, and Jace explodes. He _screams_ at the supernova between his legs and he can’t even move, can’t thrust or rock or grind into it, can only lie there and be bred as unearthly, unhuman rapture emanates from his cunt, searing all through his body, waves and waves and waves of unholy bliss and Sorath is tipping his head up, sealing his screaming mouth with its own, its long ribbon-like tongue snaking down his throat as Jace convulses and keens and sobs and comes endlessly, forever, on and on and on and on as his mate’s seed spurts and spits into his womb and he is claimed, he is bred, the immense pressure against his nodes dumping lakes of hormones into his bloodstream, triggering ovulation, triggering bliss, triggering an instant addiction to his mate’s knot inside him.

“Beautiful,” his mate says when its tongue has slithered out of Jace’s throat, when Jace can breathe, panting and mewling and still blind and broken with pleasure. “Remind me to arrange a sacrifice for Sammael, Tenebra, to give thanks for our new treasure. Some truly fine offering—Shadowhunters, perhaps.”

“I will organise a hunt,” Tenebra promises. “How fortunate that the _[velho-caste-artisans]_ created the _[life-binding]_ collar just in time for the arrival of a new _kunnarnatar!_ It would have been a pity to lose one so fine after just a clutch or three.”

“Yes, the _velhot_ must be rewarded as well.” His mate strokes Jace’s hair. “Do you hear that, treasure?” It asks him. “You came to us at the perfect time. In earlier eras even your beautiful body would only have borne me a few clutches, before dying as all mortals must. But perceive…” Its fingers slide down his face, his cheek and jaw and throat; Jace shivers as its crystalline claws chime softly against the gold collar of a _kunnarnatar_ bitch-queen. “My blood is in your collar, little treasure. Your life is bound to mine. You will live as long as I, ever-full and ever-pleasured—and I, _[gestator of possessive-my royal-caste young]_ , am all but immortal.”

Jace hardly hears a word. As another load of his mate’s seed spurts into his womb, warm and right and everything, he can only moan.

 

[1] This is not a bizarre metaphor, it is a noun. A pear of anguish is a medieval torture device.


End file.
